PERICLES’ “GOLDEN AGE”, the period of the greatest acme of ancient Hellenic civilization, coincided paradoxically with the years of “decline” that seemed to fall upon the Greeks since the mid-5th century. This downward trend was a kind of omen foretelling, like a Cassandra, about the upcoming “civil” Peloponnesian War. The most dramatic reaction then to “remedy the evil” was… anti-dramatic: the polis of Athens decreed in 440 BCE the cessation of all theatrical and musical activities for four years!

“Do not maltreat our music!” (Spartan ephori)

Performing in Sparta those days with his “modern” at the time nine-string cithara, Phrynis of Mytilene encountered the angry outcry of the ephori (ephors) who, shouting out “Do not maltreat our music!”, forcibly removed the two “extra” strings and obliged him to play with the “classical” (in the 5th century) seven-string cithara.(a)

(a) Ecprepes, an Ephor, cut out with an adze two of the nine strings of Phrynis the musician, saying, “Do not maltreat music.” (Plutarch, Moralia).
Quite moral, indeed! The “evil” was “corrected” with an adze!

Was it, indeed, a manifestation of the ephori’s extreme conservatism, or had Phrynis – a leader of the innovative school with an exceptionally melismatic and modulative style – perhaps gone too far and actually maltreated music? We shall never know: first of all, we did not… listen to him playing. But even if we’d heard him play, we’d still be unable to make up our minds judging by our own ears – by our own standards, if you like, i.e. by our current criteria on music.

But Pherecrates, a contemporary comic poet and musician, was strongly in favour of the ephori, if we consider that in his comedy, Chiron, he presented Music as complaining to Justice for abuses committed by innovators such as Timotheus of Miletus, Melanippides of Melos and Phrynis – whom, however, the comedian forgave because when he grew older he came… to his senses! On the contrary, Pherecrates threw several brickbats at Timotheus and Melanippides who remained unrepentant until the end, playing their even “worse” twelve-string instruments.

Comic playwrights, however, with their innate conservatism, permit me to say, are not the most reliable sources, judging by the way Aristophanes has “taken care” of another great innovator, Euripides. The tragedian believed in Timotheus’ talent, while Aristotle, together with other philosophers, also praised the work of the modernists:

“Without Timotheus”, the thinker of Stagira wrote in his Metaphysics, “we would not have so many melodic compositions, and without [his teacher and also formidable rival] Phrynis, we would not have Timotheus either.”

“Laconism (brevity) is the soul of wit”, the ancients remarked. But the Spartan ephori set out to… disprove them, hurriedly expelling Timotheus from their polis by decree, which the Roman philosopher Boethius preserved:

“For Timotheus of Miletus came to our city and dishonoured our ancient music by despising the seven-string lyre, and also corrupted the ears of the young people by introducing a greater variety of sounds, and gave music a feminine and sophisticated character by increasing the number of strings;

“For he depraved the melody’s simplicity and soberness, which it had thus far, instead of preserving it;

“We, the king and the ephori, declare we criticize Timotheus, and additionally compel him to remove from the nine strings those that are not necessary leaving only seven; and we banish him from our polis setting him as an example for all those who would like to introduce to Sparta some improper practice in the future”…(b)

(b) Timotheus was fool enough to go to Laconia despite Phrynis’ reception… In our previous Voyage we referred to the four basic modes (Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian). There were also three genera (diatonic, chromatic, enharmonic). Each one of these modes and genera, and also rhythms, had its own ethos. It seems that people like the Spartan ephori, or even Athenian elitists such as Plato, preferred the Dorian mode and the diatonic genus, and disliked all the rest. This might’ve been the reason for the… “ephoral” rage rather than the multi-string instruments themselves, which simply enabled the able musicians to modulate through modes and genera. We have seen the same circles condemning the multi-string instruments as unmanly and effeminate. It is no coincidence that this attitude was shared by later conservatives such as the Catholic leaders. In the 11th century they rejected the chromatic and enharmonic genera and retained only the “harder and more natural” diatonic genus, “for the diatonic is very firm and virile, the chromatic very soft and feminine, the enharmonic dissonant and moreover useless”…(*)(*) …“quia diatonum firmissimum et virilem, chromaticum mollissimum et feminilem, enharmoniumque dissonum insuper et inutilem.” Quoted in Adrien de La Fage, Essais de diphthérographie musicale (Paris, 1864), from a manuscript originating at the Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella in Florence.

Orpheus depicted on an old Greek stamp

The ephori’s “puritanism” was not just a phenomenon of the years of “decline”. This mentality of “supervising everything” characterized them also in the past bringing them into conflict – among others – with another Lesbian musician, the famous Terpander, legendary heir to Orpheus’ lyre,(c) who lived from the late 8th to the mid-7th century, that is, in the so-called “creative” times. In fact, he spent most of his life in Sparta, where he was called in during a period of political crisis to… pour oil on troubled waters! Indeed, he was able to restore peace and tranquility in the city with his music composed specially for the occasion! But the ephori, instead of thanking him, demanded… an apology because he played – alas! – a seven-string cithara and not a “traditional” – at the time – four-string instrument! They could not even suspect that these specific peace-restoring compositions could not be played on a four-string instrument…

The Spartan ephori could not even suspect that Terpander’s compositions could not be played on a four-string instrument…

(c) Legend says that when the ThracianMaenads killed Orpheus – either because he failed to honour Dionysus, or because he… spurned their advances – they cut him to pieces and threw him and his lyre into the sea. The waves carried his head and the instrument to Lesbos, where some fishermen found and delivered them to Terpander. He kept the lyre and looked after the burial of his great colleague.

Hosanna! There was an intervention – as “deus ex machina” – by Apollo himself, whose lyre, by… “divine coincidence”, was also seven-string! It was confirmed by a rumour that craftily circulated those days. Thus, even with the seal of the DelphicOracle, “the Spartans honoured the Lesbian songwriter”, according to Heraclides Ponticus (PonticHeraclea, 4th century BCE), adding: “for God commanded them through prophesies to listen to him”. Accustomed to exaggerate (let alone it was a divine command to obey to Terpander), the Spartans subsequently placed everyone “after the Lesbian songwriter”, as Aristotle wrote.

The predominance of the art of this incomparable in his time citharoedus at the expense of the ephori’sscholasticism benefited in many ways the Spartans, who secured not only a peacemaker in times of political turmoil, but also the founder of their musical life. They also say that Terpander was – among other things – the first to invent a kind of musical notation for the proper performance of the Homericepics.

The opposite happened millennia later with the notorious report On Literature, Music and Philosophy by the ephori’s descendant, Zhdanov, whom Stalin considered an expert also on issues of music because he could… “play the piano a little bit”! In his report of June 24, 1947, the “father” of “socialist realism”, who had nationalized in 1934 even… culture so as to turn it into a political tool, demanded from the famous composers Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Khachaturian and Shebalin to repent publicly, denouncing themselves! What a pity there was no Pythia anymore…

It was the nadir of a cultural policy aimed at creating… yes-men in literature and the arts – a policy that undermined the highest interests not only of culture, but also of the revolution. Note that it was not restricted in the Soviet Union but was also imposed on all “sister” parties. The Zhdanov report was discussed by Greek party intellectuals even on the barren islands of exile: it was unanimously approved! There was only one “dissonant” voice: that of Ares Alexandrou…

Well, starting from historical paradoxes, we have ended up to historical parallels, which are often detrimental to historical truth. Spontaneously we are in solidarity with the musicians and confront the… “Zhdanovist” ephori with disgust. In reality, however, we cannot be absolutely sure – especially in times of “decline” – which side was finally right: Phrynis and Timotheus or the ephori? Let alone that the above slogan of the “villains” fits perfectly well into the current situation concerning our music and, I think, we should all cry out loud rhythmically and in chorus: DO NOT MAL–TREAT OUR MU–SIC!

Our only certainty is probably that these historical episodes refer to professional musicians, heirs of a long tradition starting since very old times – since prehistory. Once mankind began producing more than what was absolutely necessary, resulting in surplus product which certain individuals gradually appropriated and thus constituted themselves as a separate class, since that moment musicians emerged as a separate profession.

First-rate musicians in the Orient were closely connected with the royal courts and the clergy – if they were not courtiers or priests themselves. The situation changed later in ancient Hellas due to climatic conditions that were mild and did not necessitate strong central power. These conditions nurtured a similar attitude among the Greeks and a relaxed relationship with the gods. The development of democratic ideas took place in the same context, as I have already tried to explain (see Voyages 2and 2*).

The Hellenes have had open and inquiring minds exactly because they’ve been open to the outside world as a result of the same conditions. Just a look at a map of Greece explains why. Thus, the oriental influence has been catalytic. The ancients, however, unlike us, did not like to… “copy and paste”. They adapted every recipe to their tastes by adding or removing ingredients. They borrowed their writing from the Cretans already in the 17th century BCE, after making the necessary changes to meet the requirements of their language (Minoan and MycenaeanLinear A and B scripts, respectively), and around the 9th century BCE received (most probably from the Phoenicians) the symbols with which they formed their alphabet – a real alphabet (and not an abjad) with letters for consonants and vowels alike. Using the same symbols (what would be more sensible?), they arrived to the point to also invent musical writing (notation) as early as the 7th-6th century BCE.

SeikilosEpitaph (1st century BCE or CE), engraved on a stele, is the oldest extant complete musical composition in the world: its main part, the song (excluding the prologue and epilogue), bears symbols denoting the melody.

“The Hellenes had musical notation well before the 6th century BC”,Iégor Reznikoff said at the 2nd Musicological Symposium in Delphi in 1986. “They were very good in keeping records; that’s why we know so much about ancient Greek tradition and return to it, as many other traditions had no musical writing and thus we know nothing about them.”

“Many ancient notations were invented by priests for priests and cantors, and some were even kept secret”,Curt Sachs remarked.

Music, with its catalytic effect on humans, was a deadly enemy of any religion, but also a mighty weapon in the hands of the priests who made sure that knowledge around this art was top secret.

A culture with a script was not necessarily a culture with a musical script; and if the notation existed, it might have been… top secret! Music, with its catalytic effect on humans and its magical powers, was a deadly enemy of any religion, but also a mighty weapon in the hands of the priests who made sure that knowledge around this art was a well-kept secret within the very select circle of initiates.

Music lesson (lyre class)

So, the Hellenes might not have been the initiators in the field of musical notation, but they first used it not for religious-authoritarian purposes but for didactic reasons, given that music was at the heart of education provided to children since they were six. Here we can find some differences between the cultures of the Greeks and the “barbarians” – i.e. those speaking languages incomprehensible to Hellenes. Greek culture was not theocratic (there was no reason to be), which is why knowledge was a public good and also right. The initiation into the mysteries was part of the devotional process, but the role of religion was completely different.

The Hellenes used the archaic alphabet for instrumentation and Ionic letters for the song.(d) This may also indicate that instrumental notation preceded the vocal. Obviously the latter became necessary because of music’s further development, thereby varying the melodic lines of voices and instruments.

(d) The idea was later adopted by Byzantines and West Europeans alike (except the Italian school) designating the musical notes with the initial letters of the alphabet: πΑ, Βου, Γα, Δι, κΕ, Ζω, νΗ, and Α, Β, C, D, E, F, G, instead of the Italian terms Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si – a terminology also used in Modern Greece, as if local musical theory never existed…

Thus we are able to play even now the extant ancient Hellenic music “remnants” – of course, approximately. That’s how – based on various indications – we also approach ancient Greek phonology, speech, pronunciation, which was musical and not dynamic as it is now.(e) The difference is enormous. This implies that the divergence between ancient and modern music is even greater.

(e) Contrary to Modern Greek, ancient Hellenic had a musical accent, which means that the accented syllable was not uttered with a stronger voice but at a higher pitch than the rest. Dionysius of Halicarnassus says that this interval was not just one or two tones, as we would imagine, but more or less similar to that of a fifth in music (e.g. Re–La)! Don’t forget that the acute, circumflex, and grave accents also implied different pronunciation in ancient Hellenic.

The arguable continuity of Greek civilization through the succession of classical antiquity with the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods – and the necessary adjustments at each stage due to changing conditions – seems to have been interrupted by the arrival of the Ottomans. So, we tend to identify the emergence of any divergence during this period. But such phenomena have been much older, as the rapid linguistic changes taking place already in the Hellenistic period show. As far as music is concerned, colossal differentiations emerged much later, not because of the Turkish yoke, but – how ironic! – as soon as this yoke was thrown off and the Modern Greek state was established supported on foreign “crutches”.

A rule that was undermined then from above concerned the link between folk and erudite music. The fact that Constantinople, Thessalonica and Smyrna – the great centres of the Byzantine and Ottoman eras – were outside the borders of the new state made things easier for the erudite musicians (all of them educated in Europe) to impose the music they could play and compose, regardless if it had nothing to do with local tradition.

Additionally, due to the fact that this tradition was shared with the former conqueror, a new kind of servitude that appeared since then also led to attempts to “harmonize” (based on the Occidental conception of harmony; see our previous Voyage) Hellenic music, both demotic song and ecclesiastical Byzantine chant. The latter was the only erudite music left in Greece, since secular Byzantine music was thoughtlessly ceded to Turkey without Hellas claiming its share of this centuries-old cultural heritage…

Didn’t those in power realize that there was a risk for the people to turn into tabula rasa? Didn’t they wonder if among the ages thrown into the dustbin the… Periclean Golden Age was also included? No problem! They bathed in the spotlight just the Parthenons (that is, the dead meaning of the Golden Age), then set up the “new Parthenons” on barren islands of exile,(f) and finally set out to strangle whatever little had survived from Pericles’ legacy with the asphyxiating embrace of concrete. The architectural chaos they’ve created may have knocked architecture down the podium of the fine arts, but that’s what business with pleasure is all about – and this combination is better achieved through… defects: it’s them that turn wallets thick!

The Europeanization of music has been going on apace all along as long as training provided in conservatories (aka… foreign music language schools) is based on European standards.(g) The absence of “national” music education at its place of birth (while “third world” countries of the Orient boast of their higher music institutes) might be unthinkable in any country other than modern Greece. Perhaps everything can be explained by amateurism or the absence of a cultural policy – without excluding the possibility of conscious action. After all, isn’t this absence of policy also… a policy?

(g) A conservatoire is called odeon in Greek. However, the ancient Hellenic odeon was not meant for music lessons but for musical shows, singing exercises, music and poetry competitions, and the like. The odeons were similar to ancient Greek theatres, but were far smaller and also provided with a roof for acoustic purposes. Regarding the conservatory, the term is definitely… unmusical as it also refers to conservatism, greenhouses, and preservatives!

The issue is far from simple. Any child inclined to music, regardless of stimuli, will be obliged to attend a conservatory having no choice: he/she will necessarily be taught a foreign musical language – the erudite European. It’s been another case of brainwashing – not only of this child but also of his/her future listeners, since it is impossible to “shepherd” the public to listen to occidental music if no one “produces” musicians specifically trained for the role, blocking the procedures of the formation of new traditional musicians, and marginalizing at the same time those who are already active. It’s been another scheme of the ruling circles in order to eradicate local traditional music and thus mutate the collective consciousness of the people.

The ruling circles tried to eradicate local tradition and mutate the collective consciousness of the people. Those who resisted were the conservatives…

Taking into account all these attempts, the continuous attacks against all local musical genres since the Hellenic state has been established, it is a miracle that this tradition has survived! It’s been victorious, of course, because it’s deep-rooted – but also because of a certain peculiarity: there was resistance against these attacks and those who resisted were mainly the conservative opponents of cosmopolitanism (e.g. Simon Karas, though sponsored by the Ford Foundation) and not the progressive Greeks, as it would be proper and normal. The fact that it was the conservatives who contributed the most in the field of safeguarding traditional music created even more confusion, obscuring the real problems.

The conservatives, of course, care about the conservation of music in the form it has survived through tradition so far. They are mainly interested in the conservation of the type (sum of typical features or clichés) of tradition, which is not seen in connection with the rest of the Mediterranean cultures where it belongs. It is the typical attitude of the folklorists missing the whole point. So they concentrate their attention on collecting songs and tunes in the form they’ve been polished to perfection by countless generations of musicians, disregarding personal creative interventions by current folk artists, ignoring that such innovations – those adopted by public taste – refined and perfected folk songs, and also rejecting any further similar effort as an attempt to adulterate their purity, arguing that in the era of individualism, the practice of collective development of music is long gone.

This may be true; but disregards the fact that the songs we admire so much have been created and perfected not by the people in general, but by their musicians as exponents of society at large or some social strata. That is, their composers and lyricists have been some talented persons, not society in general. In addition, we have no right to throw the inflow of new elements into our music in the purgatory, condemning it to a standstill – which is equivalent to death: τὰ πάντα ῥεῖ (everything flows), said Heraclitus; therefore, whatever does not flow, dies out. It goes without saying that I do not argue in favour of an uncritical acceptance of all new elements. I just point out the consequences of blind negativism: by cutting the thread of continuity, we offer the worst service to tradition. Are our folklorists under the naïve impression that barricading themselves behind the wall they are erecting, they would supposedly be safe? In the Internet era they behave like ostriches!

Folk songs have been created and perfected not by the people in general,
but by their musicians as exponents of society or some social strata.
Their creators have been some talented persons, not society in general.
In the era of individual creation, only a thorough understanding
of traditional music will enable its further development…

There’s no objection that after the invention of the phonograph, and especially since the record companies have also undertaken the promotion of their “merchandise”, the role of the people shrank into that of a passive receiver-listener. So much for the famous public taste! Thus, in the era of individual creation, only a thorough understanding of traditional music will enable its further development under new conditions – which is the hoped-for result – instead of serving as couleur locale. This development, of course, cannot come up with revivals such as the “neo-demotic” or “neo-rebetiko” that discredit the whole verbiage about “roots”, precisely because of the adherence of their protagonists to the past – if not to money…

AUTODIDACTS OR SCHOOLED?

“IF I CANNOT CHANGE A SITUATION, I accept it,”B.B. King confessed, clarifying the reason why this great bluesman changed the style of his music.(h) His statement raises openly the problem of accepting whatever situation or not, whether one can create obeying to the dictates of companies – or of the public, that is already a conditioned element. Certainly, the room for creation becomes more limited. Even those who can cope with difficulties would produce far more important work if they had a free hand. Those who manage not to debase their art under such strict control are really few. That’s why the ethos of music is already a concept unknown to musicians – something so hard to get that we are under the illusion we can find it among amateurs…

(h)Thelonious Monk, the outstanding jazz pianist and composer, advises exactly the opposite: “I say, play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing – even if it does take them 15, 20 years.”

Well, professionals or amateurs? It’s an issue we need to elaborate on because, in the field of the arts, the former are burdened with all the sins of the world (plus the junk that’s for sale), while no one dares to call into question the noble intentions of those enveloped in the halo of an “art lover”. This mentality has already spread even to professionals! We have arrived at the point where we… boast of our amateurism, considering professionalism as hubris in the land of the Homeric epics, the work of a professionalrhapsode, where the equally professionalbards of the Odyssey era (sometime between 1250 and 1170) are mentioned, namely Phemius and Demodocus. We are talking about a tradition we know for sure it’s been going on for at least three millennia – let alone that professional musicians existed well before the fall of Troy.

So, what is a professional? Generally speaking on any kind of work, since the situation around music is rather confusing, we can say that he/she is someone who:

a) knows how to do a job – has been specially trained, or skilled as an apprentice of an older artisan – and
b) out of this job he/she can at least make a living.

Three Musicians, by Picasso

Anyone who does not meet the above requirements cannot be considered a professional and, moreover, if he/she doesn’t meet the first requirement, it’s impossible to get a job (under normal conditions). There are, of course, good and bad professionals depending on the degree they can meet such requirements. A good professional, therefore, is one who cares for both the material he’s working on, and the material aspect of his work – his earnings – because otherwise his craftsmanship would be degraded and anyone could replace him. Bertolt Brecht talked about this need in his time, but who listened to him then and who remembers him now? “When you have something to say, to express,” said Pablo Picasso, “any submission becomes unbearable in the long run. One must have the courage of one’s vocation and the courage to make a living from one’s vocation… without compromise.”

The denigration of the professional musician may be linked to the Europeanization epidemic that’s been sweeping the Hellenic state since its establishment. Ionian and Athenian serenades, operettas, various retros, and European light music in general, has been the “scope of action par excellence” of the trained Europeanist super-professionals,(i) while local tradition has been left in the care of semi-professional or even amateur, self-taught musicians, treated disparagingly by the music establishment.

(i) It is striking that music which is described as… “lightweight”, superficially sentimental, and of a petty bourgeois character, is found only in the Occident after the so-called “Commercial Revolution” that commercialized everything – even the arts. The one found in the Mediterranean is imitation! Traditional musicians, when playing such pieces, characterize them as “European”, even if they have Greek lyrics or composers…

Here’s the “root of evil”: at best the state has abandoned local music to the mercy of fate; at worst it’s been hostile against it. Several posts – public or not – were surely occupied by these Europeanists. Under the circumstances, Hellenic music and its practitioners barely survived. They were obliged to do other jobs to survive – at the expense, of course, of their art that was degraded more and more, along with public taste. This profession “offered” so much insecurity that the locals (throughout the Balkans) handed it over to the “exclusive competence” of the Roma, the gypsies.

Politakia, later Smyrnaic Estudiantina: the first estudiantina founded in Smyrna in 1898 by the Constantinopolitans Basilios Sideres and Aristides Peristeres.

The situation definitely improved when and where the Greeks gained economic prosperity that allowed them to support “full time” musicians. But the dramatic improvement of the conditions of Hellenic music came with a… tragedy: the Asia MinorCatastrophe. History shows us again and again how much she can appreciate irony! Those uprooted from their ancestral homes moved in thousands into Greece (around 1.3 million people) and, together with their scanty belongings, carried with them the Anatolian sound and lifestyle – which evolved into a struggle to survive in Hellas: they brought their songs and feasts, just in case they could alleviate their plight…

The dramatic improvement of the conditions of Hellenic music came with a… tragedy: the Asia Minor Catastrophe.

The Anatolian musicians were truly professionals, with excellent knowledge of both the Mediterranean and European traditions. But they were refugees – thus, on the margins. It would take some time until they occupied responsible positions in the newly founded phonographic companies. Until then – as far as their equally marginalized public was still there – they would keep on playing their familiar repertoire of Constantinople, Smyrna and Asia Minor at large, with songs and tunes that enjoyed widespread approval in Anatolia; but not in Greece where they were not universally embraced, were rather limited in scope, for their sound was “unfamiliar” – let alone they were difficult to sing! So their fate was similar to that of their creators and they were in turn marginalized. Another historical irony was that they were replaced by the songs of the hitherto marginalizedPiraeoticrebetiko!

The reasons for this preference, therefore, were commercial – as well as political: these elaborate, demanding songs, as artistic products of an advanced culture, were reminiscent of lost homelands. So they should be removed from collective memory to – supposedly – “heal” the trauma of the Asia Minor Catastrophe. Firm was the belief that this music was inextricably linked with the Turkish language spoken by many refugees. National interest dictated some drastic measures to be taken.

The Smyrnaic songs, reminiscent of lost homelands, were marginalized for commercial and political reasons. They should be removed from collective memory to “heal” the trauma of the catastrophe… Censorship on music targeted minor thirds, a feature of the ancient Hellenic chromatic genus…

This task was later taken over by the Metaxasdictatorship, imposing censorship that was not limited to lyrics, but extended to music, as well (see also Voyage 6). The musical censors’ main target was the minor third intervals (three semitones), the so-called “bemolli”,(j) that is, the distinctive feature of the ancient Hellenic chromatic genus. Even though there are some questions around the enharmonic genus, no one has ever doubted about the chromatic: we know e.g. that it was never used in tragedies – apparently because it did not fit there. But Plutarch, according to Aristides Quintilianus (3rd century CE), said that “the cithara, several generations older than tragedy, since its very beginning, used… the sweetest and most plaintive” chromatic genus. Besides, the three ancient genera (diatonic, chromatic, and enharmonic) can also be found, noticeably remodeled, in Byzantine music. However, the Westerners – alas! – are only able to appreciate scales, especially the diatonic, while their chromatic scale has nothing to do with the chromatic genus: bingo!

(j) “In 1936 when they first imposed censorship on the songs, they ‘corrected’ the melodies of popular songs removing the ‘oriental’ elements in an effort to ‘cleanse’ popular music. Their aim was various external features of the melody, primarily minor thirds or ‘bemolli’, according to the musicians’ popular parlance.” (Giorgos Papadakis, Folk Self-Taught Musicians).
As Basiles Tsitsanes confessed in an interview with G. Papadakis: “With censorship at that time… we took away the bemolli. Bambakares for instance wrote: ‘Every evening I bwill wait bfor you, girl…’ We would change that mark and turn it withoutbemolso as not to sound oriental… We wrote beautiful serenades at that time…”(!).

Tsitsanes Tavern, Thessalonica

“How comes that no one informed Metaxas on this issue?”, – some naïve person may wonder. Well, even if someone did, he would have… disappeared later imprisoned or exiled for “anti-state activities”! Under these abnormal conditions rebetiko turned professional. Persecution affected everyone – both the Anatolians and the locals – for their music styles were first-degree relatives. Due to its tolerant police authority, Thessalonica was then turned into an oasis where many persecuted found refuge. Thus, during its early years, rebetiko influenced the city and was influenced by it.

Anyway, the painful shrinkage of Hellenism had also its positive effects, concentrating and condensing in modern Greece sounds born in three peninsulas: the Balkans, Asia Minor, and Italy. No country in the region enjoys such a privilege: its geography determines the sound of its music. This little miracle, however, with Hellenism’s three-dimensional face, collides with the mantra “We belong to the West” and is anything but welcome to the rulers who would do everything for the people to lose orientation – and if possible, they would have imposed… “occidentation” with a presidential decree!

The shrinkage of Hellenism concentrated in Greece sounds born
in three peninsulas: the Balkans, Asia Minor, and Italy.
Rebetiko’s foes covered the entire political spectrum from Right to Left.

Rebetiko’s foes, however, covered the entire political spectrum from Right to Left. In the late ’46 and early ’47, according to Phoebus Anogianakis, the musical associations asked the government to intervene taking “appropriate measures” in order to stem the spread of rebetiko:

“This initiative,” he wrote in Rizospastis, the Communist Party newspaper, on January 28, 1947, “was gradually embraced by our music critics and columnists who, in their discussions and articles, grappled with its ‘moral’ and artistic value, as well as with its effect especially on the younger generation. [Another reincarnation of the ephori!]

“Anathemas ‘in the name’ of morality at risk, or an offhand evaluation of popular rebetiko song as it is presented – mind you – in the cosmopolitan tavern, prevented a critical assessment of rebetiko creating fuss and confusion.

“The criteria of our Western music education are certainly not enough to approach and study rebetiko, especially when they are accompanied by the ‘current’ perception of morality. Many aspects of this song naturally surprise us. We have strayed away so far from its sources following our own paths that sometimes we can find ourselves with difficulty.

“The tradition of demotic song and, to a somewhat lesser extent, of Byzantine music, even though some would be surprised, continues in these songs that constitute a genuine form of today’s popular music.”

A week later, on February 4, Rizospastis published a reply letter to Anogianakis, signed by his co-fighter in the ranks of the National Liberation Front (EAM), namely Alekos Xenos, also a musician. Noting that in the newspaper Ethnos (Nation), the composer Manoles Kalomoires adopted a similar position with Anogianakis (this concurrence seemed rather… incriminating!), he outlined his diametrically opposite view:

“Rebetiko,” he wrote, “is one of the inherent contradictions of the bourgeoisie in decline. It appears in an embryonic form before the wars. It takes shape from melodic remnants of the Turkish conquerors and those melodies brought here by ship crews coming from Turkish ports. It is performed by the most lumpen strata created by the pauperizing economic tactics of capitalism.(k) It carries the most reactionary traditions, in the degradation of a segment of the bourgeoisie.

(k)Lumpen (rags in German): a ragamuffin and, by extension, every impoverished element. In Marxist theory it is combined with the word proletariat to signify the most impoverished segments of the working class having no class consciousness. Proletarius in ancient Rome was someone totally destitute who could not give the state anything but his children (proles = child). Under capitalism it is the one who cannot give the capitalist anything but his labour power.

“I think that we cannot find ourselves going back to rebetiko but to the few songs of our people’s latest Resistance and those that will be composed about it in the future.”

This fossilized thinking, which the party leadership – unfortunately – espoused, was disputed on the 23rd of the same month by Linos Polites with another letter to Rizospastis. After calling Xenos back to… Marxist order (“how comes that the lumpen is a degraded segment of the bourgeoisie?”), he censured the domestic production of tangos, concluding as follows:

“I cannot believe that A. Xenos accepts there is popular tradition and style in the music of the songs of Resistance since we know both their composers – he is one of them –(l) and the clearly Western measures in the structures of their compositions. In addition, we know that during such a short time, individual creation can far easier give its fruits.

(l) The Anthem of EPON (United Panhellenic Organization of Youth), on lyrics by Sophia Mavroeides-Papadakis (“With the golden armour of youth…”), was initially performed in the 1st Panthessalian Congress of EPON with music composed by Xenos, while in Athens it was sung with music by Anogianakis – just to mention a characteristic example…

“Today, after the great lesson of the Resistance, the gap that separates us in matters of art from the people became more than obvious and there is a clear need to find a point of contact. This point will be found in contemporary popular activities, if we examine them with less superficiality and more serious characterizations.”

Manos Hadjidakis

Then the controversy around rebetiko necessarily stopped, since another conflict had broken out – with live ammunition: it was the Civil War… Two years later, with the Left heading for defeat because of their own “mistakes” and betrayals (not because of the superior adversary firepower), another composer, also coming from the ranks of EAM but disappointed and having turned his interests elsewhere, undertook the defense of rebetiko. It was the highly penetrating Manos Hadjidakis describing the prevailing atmosphere in the late 40s:

“Our times are hard and our popular song, which is not made by people of the fugue and counterpoint who care for sanitation and make-do health make-up, sings the truth and nothing but the truth.

“Our era is neither heroic nor epic and the end of the 2nd World War left almost all the problems unresolved and up in the air.

“Furthermore, our country follows through with a war, almost uninterruptedly, with perseverance and faith in the final victory, but always – especially today – arduously and painfully. Consider now under these relentless conditions the virginal idiosyncrasy of our people. Virginal because just one hundred years of free life were not able neither to make it mature nor to leave room for the latest European trends to take root. Imagine all this piled vitality and beauty at the same time of a people like ours asking for an outlet, expression, contact with the outside world and facing everything mentioned above as main features of the era. Moreover, think of the extremely harsh conditions in our country. Vitality is burned, idiosyncrasy falls sick, beauty remains. This is rebetiko. And hence its thematology arises.

“Imagine all this piled vitality and beauty of a people asking for an outlet, expression, contact with the outside world… Think of the extremely harsh conditions in our country. Vitality is burned, idiosyncrasy falls sick, beauty remains. This is rebetiko.” (Manos Hadjidakis)

The Era of Mélisande takes us to this period that “is neither heroic nor epic”.

“Rebetiko manages to combine speech, music and movement in an admirable unity. From composition to interpretation, the conditions are instinctively created for this triple expressive coexistence that sometimes, when it reaches the limits of perfection, is morphologically reminiscent of ancient tragedy.

“Zeibekikois the purest modern Greek rhythm; whilehasapikohas assimilated a pure Hellenic peculiarity. Rebetiko is built on these rhythms; observing the melodic line of the song we can clearly discern the influence or, better, the extension of Byzantine chant. Not just examining the scales that out of folk musicians’ instinct are kept intact, but also observing the cadences, intervals and mode of execution. Everything reveals the source, which is none other than the strict and austere ecclesiastic hymn.

“Who knows what new life the leisurely and pessimistic 9/8 hold for us in the future. But, in the meantime, we would have felt their strength for good. We will hear them, very naturally and properly, raising their voice in our immediate surroundings and living in order to interpret our inner selves”…

Until the Civil War wounds healed up, many years had passed. The debate on rebetiko was rekindled in the dawn of the 60s on the occasion of Mikis Theodorakis’ Epitaph. But it was too late: the debate of the 60s seemed more like a… rebetiko epitaph – meaning it was post mortem – for its creative period, its breath, was already over…

Dinos Christianópoulos

“Persistent were the attacks on rebetiko, even after it was dead for years,”Dinos Christianópoulos comments. “Hostile attitude was maintained by nationalists and governments (especially by Metaxas and somehow more moderately by the Tsaldares government, that outlawed and persecuted it), considering it as a stigma of Greco-Christian culture;(m) religious organizations and the Church in general, that dealt with it as immoral; the fanatic communists (among them even Várnales, although he frequented in taverns), who rejected it as an expression of bourgeois decay and decadence; a part of the bourgeois press, expressing the prejudice and respectability of high society; demotic song fans (mainly schoolteachers and provincial scholars); the conservatories people, who faced it with disgust and contempt; university folklorists, who considered it as an abortion of our popular culture, and a lot of little folks emasculated by light songs.”

Noteworthy is an essay by Kostas Takhtsés on Zeybekiko – written with y because of a theory “that the etymology of the word comes fromZeusand bekos (bread in Phrygian)”. This elaborate text of 1964, rather lengthy to quote here, deserves to be read in whole, inter alia, for its important reflections, such as:

Kostas Takhtsés

“Contrary to classical Hellenic culture that modern Greeks aspired to resurrect after the War of Independence in mainland Hellas, the Byzantine world was clearly ‘oriental’. The Turks borrowed and imitated this ‘oriental’ civilization, giving to it, over time, a heavier, Turkish character, and exactly this secondary product was what generations of Greeks of servitude experienced, and brought with them when they came, as refugees, to old Hellas.”

“The guerrillas of ELAS (Greek People’s Liberation Army)”, Tachtsís also wrote referring to the years of Resistance, dissolving the embellished picture Xenos tried to create, “along with some demotic songs, depending on the area, sang Hellenized versions of Russian, and – how tragicomic! – even… German songs and paeans.”

Anyway, it is really didactic to see in outline the distressing finale of the story about rebetiko zeybekiko as narrated by Takhtsés:

“The bourgeois resisted; but they soon realized the futility of the effort. Thus, using the well-known method of rationalization or the equally well-known tactics of neutralization through containment, they embraced, adopted [the zeybekiko songs]. It’s always the best way to castrate a ‘revolution’ – cheap, safe, and bloodless. They started going on nightly treks to various taverns with bouzouki bands, the menu prices went up, the bouzouki players showed off, were flattered, saw that they had discovered a goldmine, buttoned up, even wore tuxedos, started varying their repertoire ever more with the softer, empty of any message or thought, but more tantalizing,tsifteteli, the prices went up again, the simple people got scared, withdrew to unknown taverns with still unknown bands, the eccentrics and the bourgeois discovered them, they occupied the tables there, as well, until the people, finding no place to sit, were compelled to gather outside, staring at the bands, the Americans and the bourgeois, in order to listen to the songs that were born out of them, but were far too expensive for their pockets. Thus a paranoid situation prevailed with the tourists and the bourgeois who went to see the people, and the people who went to see the tourists. Admiring products of economic misery that they were not willing to share except only aesthetically and from afar, the tourists flattered the people, for whom they became both a spectacle and objects of wonder.

“Well: with the collaboration of some well-meaning, and many dishonest or foolish people, an amazing robbery has taken place before our eyes: the people’s right to lament, at least, their fate. The zeybekiko songs have become the status quo, established themselves, lost their edge, their meaning, and have become, in turn, the Occupation tangos of our time. More Greek, of course, than the tangos but, mind you, they speak no more of social injustice, nor about the bitterness in life, they don’t protest, they consent. They speak about bourgeois pseudo-pleasures and pseudo-worries, and now and then about the bitterness of migration, which is absolutely crucial, since migration means not to face reality, but to flee from it – the only kind of flight that is still allowed, when it’s not imposed.

“Let me conclude: Those songs that managed for a while to become the means of expression of a people’s protest against their exploiters of all kinds, are now composed according to ‘plutocratic’ methods of mass production by the exploiters themselves, or they are just financed by them, for consumption by the people, and the people, who do not understand, or pretend not to understand, who have had some food to eat after the war, and, because of this little food, imagined they’ve become rich – sing them!

“I am somehow fit to judge the aesthetic result of all this unprecedented farce; and it’s lamentable”…

After such a text, silence is golden. Even D.E. Pohren’s crucial conclusion that “once a minority’s authentic musical expression becomes fashionable, it fades”, pales into insignificance. The same applies to Anogianakis’ remark that “certain current [1961] rebetiko features correspond to commercial jazz (stylized overproduction, exaggerated performance through microphones and loudspeakers, showing off of silly virtuosity).”

Here’s, then, where we have ended up: with musicians playing every night, all the time, the same repertoire with no substantial changes, bored as hell, just like their customers. When the musicians do not enjoy their art, when pathos or joys of life have been replaced by bathos or superficial revels, then merriment and “happiness” come by artificial means – drinking at best. When the musicians fail to engage creatively and freely in improvisations, having in mind just an outline, a sketch of the repertoire, leaving everything else on the spur of the moment, when they avoid or are afraid to be carried away by their imagination, and prefer to be on sure ground, then at best they may provide entertainment – for the people to forget their troubles, to be fooled away – though they should provide (at least sometimes) edutainment, “soul therapy”.(n) When the musicians act dictatorially, playing at full volume, forgetting that music has pianissimo and fortissimo, as well as a plethora of modes and rhythms, then people go out to blow off some steam, get drunk and break loose, making more noise than the amplifiers and behaving like a horde of barbarians. Then – let me say it again – the musicians have lost their best allies: the music aficionados.

(n)Edutainment (edu-cation + enter-tainment) is so weak and pale compared to the Greek ψυχαγωγία (αγωγή ψυχής = soul leading or training, education of the soul) – but what can I do? (See also Voyage 6)

But – you’re bound to ask – aren’t professionals like that? Why should I support them? Well, these are the bad professionals, I would say – regardless if they make up the majority now. Willy-nilly, they’ve fallen into the trap where other professionals, such as journalists, have also been caught, with the idea that they are… coffee men and, therefore, they make coffee according to the customers’ preferences!(o) They do not seem to bother that the order for… “light-sweet” music or news is not given by some “clients” but by their bosses. On the other hand, let’s not forget that if there was no public well-disposed to junk “music” or “news”, the bosses would necessarily have second thoughts. So, when we… shoot the piano player without looking in the mirror, chances are we’ll be finally left without a piano player!

(o) That was a publisher’s basic argument of defense in the trial of some journalists for violating a draconian Press Law…

When we shoot the piano player without looking in the mirror,
chances are we’ll be finally left without a piano player!

Music is no joking matter. It’s an art requiring years of study, either with sheet music and books or next to another musician – but always on the instrument. It takes persistent and consistent effort and study to master the technique of a single instrument and, moreover, to decipher the secrets of a single musical language. The same applies to a singer: not everything depends on a “celestial charisma”. How then is it possible to consider this verbiage of “cold” professionals and “sensitive” amateurs as well-grounded? How can a lyricist e.g. pose as a composer when he is musically “illiterate”? What would this rhymer say, indeed, if someone who had never sat down to work on language and metre declared to be a “poet”? You’ll tell me I’ve forgotten a very important parameter: in Hellas you are whatever you declare!

Popular songs – they say – are simple. Yes, but they are not simplistic! The great difficulty in their composition lies in this very simplicity. Especially when you have studied theory of music, it is rather easy to create complicated compositions. If you attempt to simplify them, if you leave just the basic melodic line, then the substance, the quality of your inspiration, reveals itself.

Popular songs – they say – are simple. Yes, but they are not simplistic!
The great difficulty in their composition lies in this very simplicity…

Let us assume that divine inspiration strikes a musically “illiterate”: he will not be able to elaborate on that because he lacks proper knowledge. And if this elaboration is taken over by someone else, the end result will be different from what he had in mind. Even if he “hits it big” and becomes a “star”, he will have capitalized on the erudition of third persons who will unfortunately, in most cases, remain unknown. Additionally, if he wishes to sing his creation, as it has become fashionable lately, he will fail, as well, because, even if he doesn’t sing out of tune (if…), he has not worked his vocal chords, ignores completely the vocal techniques, he doesn’t know the secrets of breathing, articulating and singing, and much more.

One may refer as an example to the Beatles who composed brilliant music being musically “illiterate”. Apart from the fact that they too capitalized on George Martin’s erudition, I have to stress I don’t mean by any means those musicians who are theoretically “illiterate”: the Beatles were professional musicians since the time they played – completely unknown – in Hamburg.

Mind you, the autodidacts, or self-taught musicians, have not only disadvantages but also advantages against their theoretically erudite colleagues. Let alone that the conservatory may destroy a natural talent. Liszt e.g. admired so much a self-taught virtuoso that “he trembled at the idea of him studying music, so as to keep the impulsive power of his musical instinct virginal and unchanged”, as Sophia Spanoudes wrote in her well-known column in favour of Tsitsanes in 1952. Speaking about the extraordinary advantages of autodidacts against erudite artists, Giorgos Papadakis explained why such musicians have been the salt of the earth:

Liszt “trembled at the idea of some self-taught virtuoso studying music,
so as to keep the impulsive power of his musical instinct virginal.”

“A self-taught instrumentalist is obviously required to solve many difficult technical problems alone. He is obliged to improvise solutions to problems already solved, since a teacher or a method would have significantly shortened the time required to do this. So, many times he needs to re-invent the wheel. The price can be high, but he may reap a reward that many musicians would envy: the quite personal style derived from personal improvised ways of addressing technical problems. This is evident in the way of playing of those musicians who learned out of commitment and play with commitment.”

Basiles Tsitsanes on a stamp

The musically “illiterate”, however, are also sly: they declare they are “popular composers”, instead of “popular musicians”, because otherwise the trick would have been exposed at once. So let’s have a brief look at this category, as well:

“The popular composer”, according to Phoebus Anogianakis:“a) is an uneducated person endowed by nature with musical gifts, someone who has not studied music (whatever knowledge he has is due to his extensive experience as a professional, especially in recent years, because of his contact-collaboration with musicians of light music);“b) ‘composes’ mainly songs or short instrumental pieces (of a dance or free rhythmical type) usually with the help of a popular instrument;“c) ‘bases’ his work on Greek popular music tradition, while at the same time being under some influence (from foreign popular music or also – in recent years – from local or foreign popular-like art light music).”

It goes without saying that a popular composer according to Anogianakis needs to combine the traits of a self-taught musician according to Papadakis if he is to acquire a quite personal style – and vice versa: the autodidact must be gifted by nature with musical talents and have extensive experience to re-invent the wheel…

One more thing: the term “art music”, prevailing in the 60s when Anogianakis’ text was written, is of course completely inappropriate, since it implies that a popular composer is probably… “artless”! Clearly annoyed and in a sarcastic mood, Tsitsanes once commented that the difference between popular and “art” composers is that between eyewitnesses to a crime and some others who… just heard about it!

And what about the… “illiterate”? Where can we group all those who surely have nothing in common with either Tsitsanes or the Beatles? No need to ask: they are the… perpetrators of the crime!

IT’S A PLEASANT SURPRISE when you meet the familiar figures of ancient Hellenes emerging from the pages of books about other peoples’ ways of life and expression – such as fado and flamenco – and also playing leading roles in legends that are probably unknown to modern Greeks (see the previous Voyage 3).

“Casting” those heroic Hellenes in the dramatis personæ of other peoples’ mythologies, of course, is not too strange a phenomenon. It is a measure of the splendour of ancient Greek civilization. What is quite unexpected is to find such legends in books dealing with music.

Indeed, there are so many legends, stories and tales about Heracles, Odysseus and, even more, Alexander! And it’s no coincidence at all. It’s them that have defined our common historical background: the westward voyages of Heracles and Odysseus and the eastward drive of Alexander outline this wider area, the one that, schematically more or less, I termed as the historical space of the Mediterranean.

Alexander’s exploits in the Orient are still widely acclaimed and echo in so many legends about Iskandar. In the western Mediterranean, on the contrary, the whole picture is rather obscure; it lacks clarity. It was quite natural for me to focus my attention there for one more reason: until recently almost everyone spoke of the Eastern Mediterranean as if it was not just the “gravitational” centre of this historical space, but as though it constituted an area apart from both the western half of mare nostrum and the eastern extension of the Mediterranean space into continental Asia.(a)

(a) Now everybody’s talking about one, unified Mediterranean. Well, that is something! Once upon a time – not long ago – the cliché and catch phrase (overused ad nauseam) was “ἡ καθ’ ἡμᾶς Ἀνατολή”, meaning something like “our own Orient” and referring to the long gone Hellenistic East. The exact meaning differed widely depending on the person using it. The best description of the phrase I know is Constantine Cavafy’s poem In the Year 200 B.C. (see Voyage 2). The worst ones are found in the speeches of politicians who, in the past, combined it with the so-called “Megale Idea” (“Great Idea” about a “Greater Hellas”), which proved to be not a “great idea” at all, and has since become a national nightmare…

The Rock of Gibraltar, the European Pillar of Heracles (1850)

Well, I searched for evidence to the contrary; and I arrived to the conclusion that there’s no better and more convincing example than the music – or, rather, culture – of Andalusia: the western end of our historical space has received – and repeatedly indeed – so many cultural elements from its eastern end, India, that the wide scope of exchange becomes more than obvious. If the Greeks have also been involved in this give and take, so much the better…

Andalusia, the western end of our historical space, has received so many cultural elements from its eastern end, the Indies, that the wide scope of exchange becomes more than obvious.

However, apart from les enfants terribles de l’antiquité (see Voyage 2), there are some others, as well, that outline our historical space; a people quite humble who, without having bequeathed to mankind splendid monuments of art and literature, were able to leave their indelible mark wherever they passed through, despite the relentless persecution they suffered. I’m talking about the Gypsies, the Roma who, in their own way, remind us that civilization is not only great art and culture, but also the primitive but authentic way of human expression – which, we need not to forget, was the starting point of every art form.

So, let’s go and meet them remaining on Iberian soil: from the world of fado in Portugal we cross into that of flamenco in Andalusia – and what we hear first of all are… passionate disputes about the origin of flamenco! It is an old controversy still going on strong between the advocates of an Andalusian birth certificate and those who see the genre as a Romani creation.

Even prejudiced persons are obliged to recognize that the Gypsies – or at least some of their tribes – have an innate talent for music. They are quick though to assert that the Roma are not distinguished for their creative inspiration, but just for their skill in the execution of music. Although self-contradictory, this view was expressed in all seriousness, even from authoritative personalities, perhaps with good intentions. It’s true such controversies erupted in countries, like those in Eastern Europe, with a strong gypsy presence during the formation of the so-called “national schools”. But the root of the problem goes far back:

Music was not a lucrative – and hence respectable – occupation for centuries, when the only professional musicians around were Gypsies. After the economic conditions had changed and many locals had become musicians, it was almost impossible to “purify” the local musical idioms…

Music as a profession was not a lucrative – and hence respectable – occupation for centuries, when the only professional musicians around were Gypsies. After the economic conditions had changed and many locals had become musicians, it was almost impossible to identify and set apart the indigenous musical elements from the gypsy additions – or, with a different phraseology, to “purify” the local musical idioms. Of course, we cannot accuse the Gypsies for this “problem” (if there was one)…

“Contact with foreign material,” according to Béla Bartók, the celebrated Hungarian composer and ethnomusicologist, “does not merely imply the exchange of melodies, but – and this is even more important – is also a stimulus for new styles to arise… The current situation of Eastern European folk music can be summarized as follows: As a result of the continuous interaction of several peoples’ folk music, a tremendous wealth of melodies and melody types has emerged… Therefore, the lack of racial purity that’s appeared as a final result has had crucially beneficial resonances. A complete separation from foreign influence means stagnation: well-assimilated foreign impulses offer possibilities of enrichment.”

Only racists would reject such important conclusions. But nationalism is also a problem, especially in an area like Eastern Europe as it was described above. Even Bartók was not immune to such “national sentiments”. When he realized that Hungarian folk songs traditionally employed by “classical” composers were not autochthonous, he decided to make a research. In 1908, he and Zoltán Kodály, his colleague and compatriot, travelled into the countryside to collect old Magyar folk melodies, which had previously been categorized as “gypsy music”. In contrast, they discovered that these folk melodies were based on pentatonic scales, similar to those in Asian folk traditions, such as those of Anatolia, Central Asia and Siberia.(b)

(b) First of all, the Magyars themselves are not autochthonous: they came from the Urals to what is now Hungary rather recently: in the 10th century CE. The Roma perhaps arrived there somehow later but without plundering the area around as the Magyars did! (Alas, this is the reason why there’s no Roma state today…) Why then should they care so much about indigenity? What Bartók and Kodály proved after all was that old Magyar folk melodies originated in Asia and, therefore, were not autochthonous either!
What about the rest of the melodic treasures of the area? “As a result of the continuous interaction of several peoples’ folk music, a tremendous wealth of melodies and melody types has emerged.” These melodies and melody types have been neither Austro-Hungarian, nor Czecho-Slovakian, nor Serbo-Croatian, nor Romanian or even Romani (as the Gypsies have also participated in this give and take). They belong to all – and this is quite annoying to all Eastern European nationalists!
As regards the compositions implied above, the classic example is Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies, which he based on popular tunes performed by Romani bands of the time. Another famous work – in this case by a non-Magyar composer – is Brahms’ Hungarian Dances based mostly on Hungarian themes.

In a country with “gypsy violins” famous worldwide, playing mainly heptatonic scales, a controversy broke out in 1933 regarding the point at issue. When Bartók intervened, he claimed that:

“If we want to be precise, the term ‘gypsy music‘ is incorrect, and what is described as gypsy music is in reality nothing but Hungarian music played by Gypsies”…

Alas, this “contact with foreign material” seems rather a “great idea” as long as it excludes the Romani contributions! Mind you that any “pure”, autochthonous melody anywhere in the world would be tantamount to a musical “Grail”…

Gypsy school (of violin and other strings in Hungary), by Janos Valentiny (1896)

Let’s return to Andalusia and to flamenco to go into the substance of this point at issue. Here the cultural substratum is far richer in finds with the successive layers of several civilizations. It’s obvious how inadequate the dilemma: “Gypsies or locals?”, “black or white?” is – and if you don’t suffer from colour blindness, you realize very soon that this can be nowhere true.

“In flamenco music”, according to Christian Scholze, “there are elements of Arab, Indian, North African, Greek and Jewish influence, and the respective proportions of these are hotly debated by flamencologists. What they do agree on is that the roots of flamenco lie in the suppression of the Gypsies. Wherever Gypsies found refuge and shelter over the centuries are today’s centres of flamenco.”

Voilà! There’s also Greek influence detected in flamenco! Most important, though seemingly paradoxical: among all those cultures referred to by Scholze, the only one that did not have “bearers” actually present in Andalusia in the 16th century, when flamenco’s formation began, was Hellenic culture. At that time, additionally, both the Byzantine Empire and Hellas were not on the map having lost their independence…

I mean to say that then in Andalusia, apart from the local andaluces, there were Arabs and North African Moors; there were Gypsies (as “bearers” of North Indian culture) and also Jews. It was the heterodox people that the decrees of Ferdinand and Isabella had declared personæ non grata in the name of religious “purity”, a kind of racism, in order to enforce the “new (Catholic Castilian) order”. That was the end result of the Crusades: the sanctified ethnic cleansing!

The dilemma was clear-cut: convert to Catholicism or get the hell out of here! And “for fear – even terror – of the Jews” and the rest of the heterodox people, the infamous “Holy” Inquisition began a persecution spree “in the name of God”. Most Arabs and Jews (the Gypsies had no… address and it was difficult to track them down!) were forced out of their homes, finding refuge mainly in Morocco and hoping that they would soon return (a hope shared by all refugees such as those from Asia Minor). Others (mainly Jews, not Moors who found themselves in a familiar environment in Maghreb) chose to emigrate and ended up in lands that until recently were Byzantine but had already passed under the control of the Ottomans – inter alia, in Thessalonica.

Those who stayed in Andalusia without changing their religion or the others, who were judged as insincere in their “repentance”, went underground, lived together and closed ranks out of necessity, despite all their differences, in order to confront the common enemy. Very soon this unlikely mixture of people was enriched with “new blood”: the Andalusians, who in turn passed to the other side due to various problems with the new authorities. The conquest of America e.g. started then, and the necessary “manpower” was recruited mainly in Andalusia.

Flamenco was born in such circumstances from these fugitives. But where were the Greeks? And how did they manage – being absent and from afar – to exert their influence? There can be only one answer: thanks to the splendour of their civilization – even though it was already a relic of the past…

An eristic could possibly dismiss scornfully Christian Scholze. His view, however, is not new-fangled. It is shared by most musicologists who say more or less the same. The editors of the Classic CD magazine e.g., publishing an interview with the guitarist Paco Peña, epitomized the origins of flamenco as follows:

“A synthesis of several styles, the music of the Gypsies at the base of the Iberian Peninsula comes from Moorish, Byzantine and Jewish sounds, and at a certain point of its evolution it acquired the name flamenco.”

And if that is not enough for you, here’s the American flamencologist and guitarist Donn E. Pohren, author of a trilogy on flamenco (The Art of Flamenco, Lives and Legends of Flamenco, A Way of Life) translated into many languages, and teacher of the Andalusians in Jerez de la Frontera’s Cátedra de Flamencología – but without “lecturing” at all, as he experienced flamenco’s way of life side by side with the Gypsy and local performers of this music before it became fashionable:

“Contrary to a widespread belief, the Spanish gypsies were not the sole creators of the mysterious art called flamenco. Rather, it is generally agreed that flamenco is a mixture of the music of the many cultures that have played important roles, directly or indirectly, throughout the centuries in Andalusia, the most important of these being the Muslim, Jewish, Indo-Pakistani and Byzantine.”

It’s the very first paragraph in the main part of his book dealing with The Art of Flamenco when he sets out to examine it. This chapter on Origin and Background ends with the etymology of flamenco: “Where did the term flamenco come from?”, Pohren wonders. “Again, no one knows, but theories abound”… We have already met the fugitives who probably created flamenco. Dismissing several theories about the origin of the word (e.g. Flemish, flamingo, flame, etc),(c) Pohren presents the most credible:

(c)Flemish, because of the Spanish Jews who found refuge in Flanders; flamingo, due to the supposed similarities in posture between the bird and a flamenco bailaor(!); and flame, as a graphic metaphor of flamenco’s essence.

“Possibly the most likely theory states that the word ‘flamenco’ is a mispronunciation of the Arabic words ‘felag’ and ‘mengu’ (felagmengu), which means ‘fugitive peasant’. It is likely that this term was borrowed from the Arabs (Arabic was a common language in Andalusia at that time) and applied to all the persecuted people who fled to the mountains. Through usage in Spanish ‘felagmengu’ was transformed into ‘flamenco’, until eventually the term flamenco was adopted by the fugitives themselves and in turn applied to their music.”

If all the above are again not enough for you, I need to resort to… indisputable sages – meaning in other words to invoke the views of acclaimed Spaniards who know what they’re talking about. Well, how about Federico García Lorca, his friend and teacher, Manuel de Falla, or his teacher’s teacher, Felipe Pedrell?

García Lorca used the title Poema del Cante Jondo for a 1921 collection of poems. The next year he helped Falla in the organization of the Concurso de Cante Jondo held in Granada on 13 and 14 of June 1922 with a memorable series of performances held at the Alhambra. Cante jondo or grande (deep, great song) is the most breathtaking of the flamenco forms, the most authentic and pure and, in the interwar period, the most marginalized. That’s why the two friends tried to support it. The other two forms – cante (inter)medio and chico (intermediate and small) – were considered as rather vulgarized forms, a view perhaps corresponding to the realities of the inter-war period (Lorca will soon present his point).

Federico García Lorca, by Emily Tarleton

To promote the Concurso, Falla wrote an essay, El cante jondo (canto primitivo andaluz), in which he presented the results of his own research indicating that the primary foreign influences contributing to the origins of flamenco music and dance were three: Byzantine church music coming from the eastern Mediterranean; Moorish music from North Africa and Arabia; and especially that distinct music of India and its rhythms brought by the gitanos who began arriving in Spain more than five hundred years ago. On his own part, Lorca gave a lecture on 19 February 1922. Citing Falla, he also put forward these three historical events that shaped jondo:

(d) The texts of Lorca’s lectures on Cante jondo and Duende are based on A. S. Kline’s translations.

“This mysterious migrant folk”, Lorca went on, “arriving in Andalusia, united ancient indigenous elements to what they themselves had brought, and gave cante jondo its definitive form. That is shown by the qualifying term ‘gitana’ which thesiguiriyaretains. This is not to say, of course, that cante jondo is purely Gypsy, since Gypsies exist throughout Europe and elsewhere in our peninsula, while these songs are only nurtured in Andalusia. It is a cante purely andaluz, the seeds of which existed in this region before the Gypsies arrived.”

Except the local elements, there are also Greco-Byzantine, Arabo-Moorish, Indo-Romani, and perhaps even Jewish influences detected in flamenco (García Lorca, Falla, Pedrell, Pohren, Scholze, et al.)

Flamenco guitar

In Falla’s conclusions, as well as in Lorca’s lecture, we find the same factors in the formation of flamenco; with the only exception that Jewish influence is conspicuously absent… Regarding the contribution of the Roma, Lorca tried to evaluate it in its proper dimensions, advocating neither in favour of an Andalusian parthenogenesis – for the Gypsies “gave cante jondo its definitive form” – nor in favour of a Romani birth: despite the many similarities he cited among the key elements of cante jondo and some Indian songs, mostly love songs (he’ll deal about that later, as well), Lorca persistently insisted that “jondo is a cante purely andaluz”.

Indeed, flamenco was impossible to be born in India; but, without the Roma, not even in Andalusia; just like rebetiko was impossible to be born in Asia Minor; but, without the Anatolian refugees, not even in Greece; or just like blues was impossible to be born in Africa; but, without the black slaves, not even in America. If this is true about the blues, an almost exclusively black music, you can imagine how much more relevant it is in the cases of flamenco and rebetiko where two locals became leading figures: Paco de Lucía and Basiles Tsitsanes.

Flamenco was impossible to be born in India; but without the Roma not even in Andalusia. Rebetiko was impossible to be born in Asia Minor; but without the Anatolians not even in Greece. Blues was impossible to be born in Africa; but without the blacks not even in America.

“Every cloud has a silver lining”: the truth of the apophthegm is revealed in these diamonds of our musical culture. We can now enjoy their sparkling beauty thanks to the Roma, the Anatolians and the blacks – those that played the role of a catalyst in the polish of these diamonds of the Orphean art – who, nevertheless, suffered tremendously. Of course, some people had to play the role of the villains. For the gypsies, among many others, it was Tamerlane; for the Anatolians it was Kemal; for the blacks? Here we lose count!

Of course, Lorca also spoke about the difference between cante jondo and flamenco in general – “an essential distinction based on antiquity, structure and spirit”:

“The essential difference is that the origin of cante jondo must be sought in the primitive musical systems of India, that is, in the first manifestations of song… It is cante imbued with the mysterious colour of primordial ages; flamenco is relatively modern and it cannot be said to acquire its definitive form until the 18th century… Spiritual colour versus local colour: that is the profound difference. Cante jondo is, then, the rarest specimen of primitive song, the oldest in Europe, bearing in its notes the naked shiver of emotion of the first oriental races. Manuel de Falla affirms that the Gypsy siguiriya is the only genre on our continent that preserves in all its purity the primary qualities of the primitive songs of the oriental peoples.”

Let’s have a closer look at siguiriya gitana, the appropriate song to express sorrow, deep pain, despair. According to Falla, it is the archetype of cante jondo, as Lorca defined it in another lecture, as well, entitled Architecture of Cante Jondo in 1931. Whether siguiriya is gitana or “purely andaluz” we better leave it to the Spaniards. For us, outsiders, far more interesting is the common position of the three musicians mentioned above, namely Pedrell, Falla, and Lorca (he was also a musician, let’s not forget). I quote from his lecture of 1922:

Felipe Pedrell

“The great master Felipe Pedrell, one of the first Spaniards to treat questions of folklore scientifically, writes, in his magnificent Cancionero popular español: ‘Musical orientalism survives in various popular songs and is deeply rooted in our nation through the influence of ancient Byzantine civilization on the ritual used in the Spanish Church, from the conversion of our country to Christianity until the 11th century when the Roman liturgy [Gregorian chant] can be said to have been fully introduced.’

“Manuel de Falla adds to this statement of his old master, specifying the elements of Byzantine liturgical chant revealed in siguiriya, which are: the tonal modes of primitive systems (not be confused with those known as Greek modes), the enharmony inherent in those modes, and the lack of metric rhythm in the melodic line. ‘These same properties characterize certain Andalusian songs which appeared long after the Spanish Church’s adoption of Byzantine liturgical music, songs which have a close affinity with the music which in Morocco, Algiers and Tunis is still called… «the music of the Moors of Granada.»’ [Siguiriya has] ‘specific forms and characteristics distinct from its relationship to sacred chant and the music of the Moors of Granada.’ [Falla] has found an extraordinary agglutinative Gypsy element… of Indic origin.”

Hence we can also speak of siguiriya griega or bizantina, not only indiana or gitana! But the findings of this triad (Pedrell, Falla and Lorca) go far beyond the relatively recent past, to prehistoric times. Lorca explains:

“Many suppose that chanting is the earliest form of language.”
(Falla, Lorca)

Manuel de Falla in action

“The essential similarities that Manuel de Falla notes between cante jondo and certain songs of India are: ‘Enharmonics, as in intermediate modulation; a restricted melodic line, rarely exceeding the compass of a sixth; and the reiterative almost obsessive use of a single note, a process proper to certain forms of incantation, including recitations which might be termed prehistoric, and have led many to suppose that chanting is the earliest form of language.’(e)In this manner cante jondo, especially siguiriya, creates the impression of sung prose, destroying all sense of rhythmic metre, though in reality its literary texts are assonant tercets and quatrains.”

(e) Primitive chant: a short, simple series of syllables or words sung on or intoned to the same note or a limited range of notes; a monotonous rhythmic call; a primitive “recitative”, vocalism; prosody (“melos of speech”, according to Aristoxenus), i.e. the “melody” produced during speech.

Going way back into history, we need to parallel this incantation-recitation with the paracatalogé (παρακαταλογή) of ancient Hellenic tragedy, “a kind of melodramatic recitation of tragic and pathetic parts”, according to Giorgos Iohannou, which “was something intermediate between the catalogé, i.e. the usual recitation of chants, and the proper song, the ode.” Let us not forget, by the way, that the ancient drama was all in verse. It’s not a coincidence that the modern Greek word for song, tragoudi (τραγούδι), comes from tragedy, while out of paracatalogé the word paralogé (παραλογή, ballad) was coined. The paracatalogé was accompanied, usually by aulos; in this sense it differed from the catalogé; as a melodramatic recitation, it was not a sung recitative; it also differed from the ode because there was no melos (melody), other than a certain rhythmic emphasis and the tonal or pitch accent of the ancient Hellenic language, which was musical, not dynamic like modern Greek. The tragic and pathetic effect was achieved by inserting paracatalogé in the middle of sung parts (ἐν ταῖς ωἰδαῖς). This technique enhanced the dramatic appeal of the text.

In Hellenic tragedy, “paracatalogé, a kind of melodramatic recitation of tragic and pathetic parts, was something intermediate between the catalogé, i.e. the usual recitation of chants, and the proper song, the ode.” (Giorgos Iohannou)

Alhambra with Generalife by night

D U E N D E

GARCÍA LORCA gave another lecture in 1930 on Theory and Play ofDuende – a keyword in order to get to the bottom of the essence of flamenco, of music in general, and to penetrate the core of all the arts, especially the so-called performing arts. According to dictionaries, duende means “fairy, demon, ghost, devil, goblin, spirit – holy or evil.” Dictionaries rarely make things clear on concepts related to music and culture. And why should we let ourselves in the mercy of lexicographers when we have Lorca as a guide? Let’s listen to him with due attention as we are introduced to the magic and mystical duende:

“All through Andalusia… people constantly talk about duende and recognize it wherever it appears with a fine instinct… The old Gypsy dancer La Malena once heard Brailowsky play a fragment of Bach, and exclaimed: ‘Olé! That has duende!’ but was bored by Gluck, Brahms and Milhaud. And [flamenco singer] Manuel Torre, a great artist of the Andalusian people, a man who has more culture in his veins than anyone I’ve known, on hearing Falla play his own Nocturno del Generalifespoke this splendid phrase: ‘All that has dark sounds has duende’… – agreeing with Goethe, who in speaking of Paganini hit on a definition of duende: ‘A mysterious force that everyone feels and no philosopher has explained.’

“All that has dark sounds has duende.” (Manuel Torre)

“I heard an old maestro of the guitar say: ‘Duende is not in the throat: duende surges up, inside, from the soles of the feet.’ Meaning, it’s not a question of skill, but of a style that’s truly alive: meaning, it’s in the veins: meaning, it’s of the most ancient culture of immediate creation. It is, in sum, the spirit of the earth, the same duende that scorched Nietzche’s heart as he searched for its outer form on the Rialto Bridge and in Bizet’s music, without finding it, and without seeing that the duende he pursued had leapt from the Greek mysteries to the dancers of Cádiz and the headless Dionysiac scream of Silverio’s siguiriya.”

The “Dionysiac” and “mystic” Hellenes are here again in full force. Their theatre of action is now Cádiz, the ancient Gadeira (Gadir), or Roman Gades.(f) To this port of Andalusia on the Atlantic, just outside the Straits of Gibraltar, the Pillars of Heracles, we will return shortly. For the time being, we continue listening to Lorca spellbound:

(f) The ancient root is retained in the adjective gaditano: of/from Cádiz, its native/inhabitant.

“For every man, every artist called Nietzsche or Cézanne, every step that he climbs in the tower of his perfection is at the expense of the struggle that he undergoes with his duende, not with an angel, as is often said, nor with his Muse… Angel and Muse come from outside us: the angel brings light, the Muse form (Hesiod learnt from her)… While duende has to be roused from the furthest habitations of the blood. Reject the angel, and give the Muse a kick… The true struggle is with duende.

“The great artists of southern Spain, Gypsy or flamenco, singers, dancers, musicians, know that emotion is impossible without the arrival of duende. They might deceive people into thinking they can communicate the sense of duende without possessing it, as authors, painters, and literary fashion-makers deceive us every day, without possessing duende: but we only have to attend a little, and not be full of indifference, to discover the fraud, and chase off that clumsy artifice.

“Emotion is impossible without duende.” (García Lorca)

Pastora Pavón, la Niña de los Peines

“Once, the Andalusian ‘Flamenco singer’ Pastora Pavon, La Niña de Los Peines, sombre Spanish genius, equal in power of fancy to Goya… was singing in a little tavern in Cádiz. She played with her voice of shadows, with her voice of beaten tin, with her mossy voice, she tangled it in her hair, or soaked it inmanzanillaor abandoned it to dark distant briars. But, there was nothing there: it was useless. The audience remained silent… Pastora Pavon finished her song in silence. Only, a little man… sarcastically, in a very soft voice, said: ‘Viva, Paris!’ as if to say: ‘Here ability is not important, nor technique, nor skill. What matters here is something else.’

“Then La Niña de Los Peines got up like a madwoman, trembling like a medieval mourner, and drank, in one gulp, a huge glass of fiery spirits, and began to sing with a scorched throat, without voice, breath, colour, but… with duende. She managed to tear down the scaffolding of the song, but allow through a furious, burning duende, friend to those winds heavy with sand, that make listeners tear at their clothes with the same rhythm as the Negroes of the Antilles in their rite… La Niña de Los Peines had to tear apart her voice, because she knew experts were listening, who demanded not form but the marrow of form, pure music with a body lean enough to float on air. She had to rob herself of skill and safety: that is to say, banish her Muse, and be helpless, so her duende might come, and deign to struggle with her at close quarters. And how she sang! Her voice no longer at play, her voice a jet of blood, worthy of her pain and her sincerity”…

What an evening, indeed! I would love to be there… Well, here we are back to Cádiz with the captivating description of duende by Lorca. It’s where we meet again Donn Pohren, who will lead us to the ancient city of Gadir via… India!

Donn Pohren

“Today”, he says in his Biographical History, Lives and Legends of Flamenco, the second book of his flamenco trilogy, “nearly all theoreticians of the dance agree that the baile flamenco is directly descended from the ancient religious dances of the Indian Hindus… What in all likelihood has taken place is that the highly-civilized Brahmanic temple dances were adopted by a lesser-developed people, shorn of many subtleties, and returned to a more natural and primitive art form concerned only with the expression of oneself and one’s emotions.

“Let us attempt to construct a brief history of the development of these Indian dances within Spain. First of all, how did they reach Spain? Traditionally performed only in the temples during Brahmanic religious rites, these dances eventually began to be danced more popularly outside the shrines in India. It was then that they were first introduced into other lands by way of early Mediterranean trading vessels and overland caravans. The point of entrance into Spain was most certainly Gadir, later called Gades, today called Cádiz, the oldest city in Spain, founded by the Phoenicians around 1100 BC. Gadir was an extremely important city, and it is likely that professional Indian dancers were brought in to entertain the city’s royalty, probably during the time of the Greeks (c. 500–250 BC), less likely during the reign of the Romans (c. 250 BC–475 AD).(g) Hindu musicians and singers surely accompanied the dancers, and thus also introduced their art forms into Spain during this same period. This would partly explain the strong similarities that still exist between certain types of Hindu singing and music, and flamenco.

(g) Although we have just heard Lorca telling us that “duende had leapt from the Greek mysteries to the dancers of Cádiz”, there was probably no Hellenic period then in Gadir. From the Phoenicians and the Punics (whom Pohren seems to ignore), the city passed into the hands of the Romans in 206 BC. Irrespective of the error, what’s important here is not who the master of the city was at the time, but the fact that Gadir functioned as a gateway for the Indian dance and music influence into Andalusia. Whatever the case, we know that in their symposia, the Hellenes, both in mainland Greece and in the colonies, used to enjoy the art of foreign singers and musicians, mostly women, who (according to the symposiasts’ “tastes”) appeared dressed or nude, as we are told by Athenaeus(“Deipnosophistae”, 3rd century CE) and Suda (“Lexicon”, 10th century).

Symposium scene with an aulos playing girl [modestly dressed up, not nude], by Nicias painter

“These civilizations, with their emphasis on culture, undoubtedly introduced this religious dancing into their own temples, so that by the arrival of the Visigoths in Andalusia (c. 450–700), this type of religious dancing had already become so traditional as to be carried over into the primitive Spanish Church, encouraged and even performed by early Christian priests. ‘It is now known that the fathers of the primitive Church openly admitted, and even fomented with their examples, the adoption by the Christian cult of certain elements of the sacred oriental dances, frequently danced by the very priests themselves.’ (‘El Baile Andaluz’, by Caballero Bonald).

“The Visigoths accepted Catholicism and merged with the Hispano-Roman population, and religious dancing continued throughout their reign.(h)

(h) Pohren, just like Mascarenhas Barreto in the previous Voyage 3, put the cart before the horse, speaking about Catholicism before the schism. Although this doubling of the error makes me wonder: may Catholicism be synonymous with Christianity and Orthodoxy is a… heresy? Terra incognita: religious affairs have never been my forte!

“It is postulated that during the reign of the Moors (c. 711–1492) these sacred dances were danced more and more popularly outside the confines of the church, possibly even by Spain’s first gypsies, who were thought to have come as camp-followers of the Moorish armies (after having arrived in North Africa from their homeground, India, by way of Pakistan, Persia, and Arabia). As both the gypsies and the Moors already cultivated a type of dance largely derived from the Brahmanic religious dances, their arrival most certainly gave the existing Andalusian dances a shot in the arm…

“Another historical event in the development of the flamenco dance was the arrival of the second migration of gypsies to Spain around 1450, shortly before the Moors were expelled from their last footholds in Andalusia. The gypsies arrived from India by the northern route (Persia, Russia, etc), bringing with them their interpretations of Indian dances and songs, and adding fresh fuel to the Andalusian folklore…

“After the Moors were forced out, all religious connotations in the dance ceased. The dances were not only banned from the Church because of their increasing sensuality and ‘sinful movements’, but at one time persecutions were carried out against interpreters of certain dances regardless of where they were danced. It was then that the dance, together with the cante, went underground, becoming an art of the ‘lawless elements’ of society. This happened more or less simultaneously with the 16th century edicts ordering the expulsion of the Moors, gypsies, and Jews, and can probably be cited as the beginning of the formation of flamenco as we know it today.”

This panoramic picture of the evolution of dance from the Indian Brahmanic temples to the Andalusian gypsy camps, with all intermediate stages, has a negative side: it is one-dimensional, presenting India as thematrix of the art of dance – and even more – leading to wrong conclusions. But if, instead of the dance, we trace the evolution of the guitar, then the mosaic of the exchange becomes three–dimensional and balanced. Our guide, Pohren, as a guitarist, moves now into more familiar waters:

Ancient Hellenic kithara

“The Spanish guitar”, he writes in the chapter of the same book (Lives and Legends of Flamenco) dealing with his instrument, “is the direct offspring of, principally, the guitarra latina (Latin guitar) and, secondarily, the guitarra morisca (Moorish guitar), both of which are generally believed to have descended from the ancientkitharaasiria(Oriental zither).(i)

(i) Note how terminology differs in the phases of the guitar’s development: cithara/kithara > guitarra. It refers to the time when the ancient kithara ceases to have the form of a large ancient lyre and acquires a “neck” or “arm”.

“First let us attempt to trace the kithara asiria. José de Azpiazu, in his book “La Guitarra y Los Guitarristas”, makes the observation that we must look to Egypt and Babylonia for the earliest string instruments, including the zither, from whence they passed on to Syria, Persia, India, and the Middle and Far East in general. He bases this assumption on diverse archaeological finds, principally in Egypt, singling out in particular a bas-relief, dated at 3500 BC, discovered in the tomb of one of the Kings of Thebes. This bas-relief, now in the museum of Leyden (Holland), includes an instrument somewhat resembling today’s Spanish guitar. Azpiazu also states that around the time 1000–800 BC the Egyptians possessed an instrument greatly resembling the modern guitar. This instrument could easily have been the previously mentioned guitarra morisca, or one of its predecessors in its development from the kithara asiria.

Egyptian musician 3500 years ago playing a guitar-like instrument

“However, in view of continued archaeological discoveries, no date or place can be irrevocably pinpointed concerning the origin of any of the ancient stringed instruments. The discovery by an English archaeologist, Kathleen Kenyon, determining that the city of Jericho was teeming with life as far back as 6800 BC, makes the first Egyptian dynasty (3400 BC) seem relatively modern. In truth, the family tree of string instruments, in all of its rich variety, is as vague as civilization’s early history. Perhaps the only data available to sustain the belief that the guitar is descended from the ancient kithara asiria is the similarity and progression of the zither-guitar terminology in various languages, and the corresponding similarity and development of the instruments represented by the terms, as follows: qitâra (Chaldea – an ancient region in Southeast Asia, on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers), quitar (Arabic),sitar(Hindi), kithara (Greek), cítara (Spanish) and guitarra (Spanish).

Vihuela: the bygone “aristocrat” cousin of the “folk” guitar, with six strings, as well, but double. She’s probably the mother (at least as a term) of the so-called viola, the guitar that accompanies the so-called guitarra portuguesa, the leading instrument of fado.

“If we wish to follow the popular theory that the guitar was derived from the kithara (there is no good reason not to), the guitar’s development in Spain can be traced in rough outline. It is generally agreed that the kithara asiria (then called the kithara romana) was introduced into Spain during the time of the Romans, sometime before the birth of Christ.(j) The kithara flourished in Spain until the fall of the Spanish Roman Empire (5th century), at which time it fell largely into disuse until the invading Visigoths were firmly established on the peninsula. The Visigoths set about reviving the old Roman culture, and the kithara again emerged. In the 7th century San Isidro wrote of wandering minstrels singing and accompanying themselves on the kithara… It was around this period that the guitarra latina, an instrument containing four sets of double strings and which resembled a small version of the present Spanish guitar, was developed in Spain, presumably, as we have stated, from the kithara romana.

(j) “In my opinion”, footnotes Pohren, “it is more likely that visiting Hindu musicians introduced the kithara asiria, or similar instruments, into Cádiz before the coming of the Romans, probably during the reign of the Greeks”… Well, in my opinion it is far more likely that the Hellenes themselves introduced into Iberia their own kithara helénica!

A woman playing a lyre (an instrument that shows the kithara to guitarra transition), by Cesare Saccaggi

“Meanwhile, in the Middle East the kithara asiria had long ago inspired the family of the guitarra morisca, an oval-shaped, three-stringed instrument introduced into Spain with the 8th century Moorish invasion. It is thought that the only significant characteristic that the Latin guitar borrowed from the Moorish guitar, in its development into Spanish guitar, was the idea of the single strings in place of the formerly-used sets of double strings.

“So by the 9th century there existed in Spain guitars not unlike those we play today, but until the troubadour period (11th through the 13th centuries) the guitar was not widely introduced to the general populace. Little structural change of any significance took place in this guitar until the 16th century, when Vicente Espinel began using a fifth string. (This was not Espinel’s invention, as guitars had existed previously with five strings. Espinel merely made the fifth string fashionable. Many musicologists express the belief that the famous Ziryab himself first innovated the use of the fifth string in the 9th century). With this development the Spaniards finally seemed to feel that the guitar was their instrument, and it was then that the guitarra latina was rechristened the ‘Spanish guitar’. Two centuries later the final radical development was made, which was the addition of the sixth string by fray Miguel García, a monk also known as Padre Basilio, an excellent classical guitarist and the guitar instructor of King Carlos IV, Queen María Luisa, and the famous concert guitarist, Dionisio Aguado. Thus, except for its growth in size and quality, by the latter third of the 18th century the Spanish guitar was as we know it today.

“Now that we know something of the development of the guitar, let us look into the development of the music. According to Lévi-Provençal (La Civilización Árabe en España), the great tradition of Andalusian music was molded together and developed in the Cordovan conservatory of music established and directed by the Mesopotamian musician, Ziryab, in the 9th century. (Ziryab arrived in Córdoba in 822, in his early thirties, and remained there the rest of his life). What he must have done was gather, and become proficient in, the Andalusian folklore of that period, which was, of course, highly Oriental in nature, and conserve and teach it to attending minstrels and nobility in his conservatory. As he had spent years in the courts of Baghdad, and was the supreme musician of his time, he undoubtedly added to, and purified, what he found. Ziryab, in fact, is credited with having played the major musical role in making Andalusia the outstanding cultural center of the world at that time.”

“Ziryab played the major role in making Andalusia the outstanding cultural center of the world in the 9th century.” (Donn Pohren)

Chelys: a lyre made with a tortoise shell

In this monumental mural painted mainly by Lorca and Pohren, with all the others contributing, we only need to apply some extra brushstrokes to… exonerate the Assyrians, who became notorious in history mainly for their cruelty, but also to show that in social processes parthenogenesis is out of the question in all places and all times – even in the case of the ancient “Hellenic miracle” that has been feasible due to borrowing know-how and intellectual “goods” from the Orient.

The kithara was an instrument of the professionals, while its little sister, the lyre, of the amateurs. According to the Encyclopedia of Ancient Hellenic Music by Solon Michaelides (the source of much information during our Voyages), the kithara was called Άσιάς (Asian). Plutarch (1st–2nd century CE) maintained that “it was called Asian because it was used by the Lesbiankitharodes [citharoedes or citharedes: kithara players who also sang] dwelling close to Asia”. This is, of course, a pretext – even if Lesbos is actually close to Asia Minor. We learn the truth from Hesychius of Alexandria (5th century CE), who explains that the kithara was defined as such “for it was invented in Asia”. The adjectives Άσιάς and Άσιάτις (Asian, Asiatic) were used not only in relation to the kithara, but also to music as a whole; as Strabo points out: “all music is thought to be Thracian and Asian”. Ancient Thrace, of course, was not a part of Hellas.

These instruments of the kithara and lyre family have been extinct for centuries now because they were left behind in relation to the development of music, becoming inadequate and unable to satisfy the needs of the people – musicians and listeners. They are now rarely found still in use among primitive tribes, primarily in northeastern Africa – and this is indeed a pleasant surprise! Some German ethnomusicologists recorded, among others, the sound of a lyre played by a cattleman, member of the Hamar tribe of Ethiopia, and put his photo on the album’s cover. Isn’t it impressive? The symbol of so many “serious” music institutions, the “musical instrument par excellence” of the ancients, the celebrated Chelys of Hermes, who offered it to Apollo (to atone for stealing his oxen!), to be “mislaid” in the hands of primitive Africans, and also been made with a tortoise shell? It can’t be, these Germans should have been certainly related in some way with… Fallmerayer!

In conclusion, if we assume that the guitar descended from the kithara, the latter must have been combined with some kind of lute – that is, with an instrument having a “neck”: the guitar belongs to this lute family. The only similar instrument in ancient Greece was the so-called tríchordon (three-string), or pandura, panduris, panduros and phanduros. In Alexandrian times there was already a whole family of such instruments that became later even larger with the additions of the erudite thambura (tambur of Constantinople), folk tanbur-saz or bağlama, and also bouzouki.

Bow harp (e.g. ennanga from Uganda): descendant of the musical bow and precursor of the string instruments

As regards the origin of the instrument, Pollux (2nd century CE) informs us: “tríchordon, which the Assyrians called it pandura; it was also their invention.” Thus, pandura, as a term and as an instrument, was Assyrian. Therefore, the kithara asiria, which Pohren referred to, must have been associated with pandura. The term tríchordon that the Hellenes used for the pandura means that the latter was also a tríchordon, that is, a three-string instrument. Let’s not forget that the guitarra morisca, a kithara asiria descendant, was also a tríchordon.(k)

(k)Kithara most probably means tríchordon, three-string. The Indian sitar (of a common etymological origin), though it’s multi-stringed now (about 20 strings; 6-7 melodic and the rest sympathetic, “sympathizing”, i.e. vibrating, with the melodic ones) is believed to have a Persian origin, denoting three-string (seh-tar in Farsi means “three-string” – besides, in Iran there is still a kind of three-string tanbur called setar).

It’s thrilling to imagine that the starting point of all these instruments was the primitive hunter’s bow; that in time of rest could become a musical bow…

Such ‘tangible’, “convincing evidence” in the archaeologists’ hands, i.e. a number of Egyptian trade items found in Spain, is of “a somewhat later period”, after the fall of the Minoans, ca 1400-1200 BCE. Although the possibility of “Phoenician intermediaries” cannot be ruled out, one needs to have in mind that exactly in this “somewhat later period” (late Bronze Age), especially in the western Mediterranean, sea trade was in the hands of those who brought about the fall of the Minoans, that is, the Mycenaeans – who, strangely enough, are not even mentioned by the American professor! Therefore, his assertion that the Egyptian trade items found in Spain “almost surely may be associated with Phoenician intermediaries” is anything but scientific.

Besides, the Aegean presence in Egypt, the country of origin of these trade items, dates back to at least Mycenaean times and more likely even further back into the Minoan age, when a trade settlement was founded in the Nile Delta under the aegis of the Pharaohs, namely Naucratis (Ναύκρατις). It was the first and, for much of its early history, the only permanent Hellenic colony in Egypt, acting as a symbiotic nexus for the interchange of Egyptian and Greek trade items, art and culture.(b) When a historian “forgets” the Mycenaeans and Naucratis, it means he wears “Phoenician myopic glasses”! Under the circumstances, Stanislawski, an expert on Portugal, cannot be suspected of pro-Hellenic bias in his narrative about the same fateful events in Iberia related in the previous Chronicles 6, 7, and 8. At the same time, we can test the accuracy of our own testimony:

(b) Naucratis, which was located in the Nile Delta, on its westernmost branch, 70 kilometers southeast of its mouth, where Alexandria was later to be built, was not only the first Greek settlement in Egypt but also Egypt’s most important harbour in antiquity until the rise of Alexander’s city. Its first period is obscure because of the collapse of Mycenaean civilization and the ensuing “Dark ages” (1100-750 BCE). A Hellenic cultural “renaissance” in the 7th century brought about renewed contacts with the East and its two great river civilizations of the Nile and Mesopotamia. According to Herodotus the shrine known as the Hellenion was a co-operative enterprise financed by nine Greek city-states: four Ionian (Chios, Clazomenae, Teos and Phocaea), four Dorian (Rhodes, Halicarnassus, Knidos and Phaselis), and one Aeolian (Mytilene). Miletus, Samos and Aegina had their own separate sanctuaries. Thus the natives of at least twelve Hellenic cities worked in a collaboration that was not only rare but proved to be lasting.

The sister port of Naucratis was the harbour town of Heracleion or Thonis, Egypt’s main seaport to Greece, which was only discovered in 2000 by the French underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio. Its ruins are located 2.5 kilometers off the modern coast. The city was built on some adjoining islands connected with bridges and intersected by canals. It submerged into the sea in the 6th or 7th century CE, probably due to major earthquakes and floods. The “Stele of Naukratis” with a Pharaonic decree on it, describes Heracleion as a “harbour in the Sea of Hellenes”, referring to the Mediterranean. Its twin “Stele of Heracleion” was recovered in 2000. The city’s Greek name is linked to a large temple of Khonsu, whom the Greeks identified with Heracles. The city is believed to have been visited by the great hero, as well as Paris and Helen on their flight from the jealous Menelaus, before the Trojan war. Heracleion’s mythic wealth was lauded by Homer, as well.

An offspring of Naucratis was Athenaeus, a Hellene rhetorician, grammarian, and gastronomist, flourishing in the late 2nd – early 3rd centuries CE. His books have been lost, except a 15-volume synopsis of his 30-volume Deipnosophistae (Banquet Connoisseurs), which mostly survives. It is an immense store-house of information, on matters linked to dining, music, songs and dances, games, courtesans, and luxury. Guests included wealthy persons, patrons of art, and scholars, jurists, musicians, and others, who described the lifestyle, the arts and scientific knowledge of the Greeks. In the course of discussing classic authors, they made quotations from nearly 800 writers and 2,500 works, many of them unrecorded. Thus we are entrusted much valuable information about the ancient world and many authors that would be otherwise unknown.

An Athenaeus’ contemporary, a bit older, was Julius Pollux (Ἰούλιος Πολυδεύκης), also born in Naucratis, flourishing in the late 2nd century CE and living a long life of more than 80 years. He was a grammarian and sophist, scholar and rhetorician, whom Commodus appointed a professor-chair of rhetoric in the AthenianAcademy – due to his melodious voice, according to Lives of the Sophists by Philostratus. Nothing of his rhetorical works has survived. His valuable extant work is Onomasticon (Ὀνομαστικόν), a thesaurus or dictionary of Attic synonyms and phrases in ten books, arranged not alphabetically but according to subject-matter. It supplies in passing much rare information on many points of classical antiquity – objects in daily life, the theatre, music, politics – and quotes numerous fragments of lost works. Thus, Pollux became invaluable for William Smith‘s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1842), etc.

Other personages linked with Naucratis were the Naucratis Painter, a vase-painter of the 6th century BCE, and also Rhodopis, a celebrated Thracianhetaera who lived in the same period. Herodotus says she was a fellow-slave of the fable teller Aesop, with whom she had a secret love affair. Charaxus, brother of Sappho, who had gone to Naucratis as a merchant, fell in love with her, and ransomed her from slavery with a large sum of money. Sappho wrote a poem accusing Rhodopis of robbing her brother of his property but, nevertheless, the hetaera became the model for the original version of the Cinderellastory recorded later by Strabo.

Celts in Europe

A WESTWARD MOVEMENT

Celtic art in Spain

The earliest passage of Phoenician ships through the Straits of Gibraltar was probably made during the general period of time when the Central European farmers and pastoralists were first entering the Cantabrian region. These events preceded the 1st millennium BC. Later, Greek exploration and trade grew, following the example given by neighboring Phoenicia, perhaps as early as the 9th century and certainly by the end of the 7th century BC. Such contacts can be equated in time with the acceleration of the East-West movement of peoples and cultures which took place in the North with the advent of the Celts, who may have appeared in Iberia as early as 900 BC, and the main force of which was felt by the 6th century. Between the 6th and the 3rd centuries BC, while the lands of the western Mediterranean were developing under the influence of active and aggressive Greeks and Carthaginians, northern Iberia was changing under the influence of Celts of later arrival from beyond the Pyrenees. There was a difference, however, between the early contacts along the Mediterranean coasts and those of the Central Europeans with northern Iberia. It was not opportunity for settlement that drew men along the southern coasts, but trade… It was the attraction of metals that drew the early Greeks beyond the straits of Gibraltar and along the western coasts of Spain.

CONTACTS WITH THE WEST COAST OF IBERIA

It is possible that the early merchant wayfarers sailed up the west coast to trade directly with Galicia. But if they did, the coast of present Portugal represented a gap in their interest, for there is almost no record of them there.(c) It would seem that Portugal was then, as through so many periods of time before and after, apart from the main stream of events. It possessed no great source of silver such as the mines of Andalusia, nor of copper or tin (with slight exceptions in both cases).(d) With her metals, Spain was a magnet for the early traders, whereas Portugal attracted casual traders at most…

Egyptian scarabs

(c) There are slight exceptions; e.g., there is the Egyptian scarab of the 7th century BC that was found in a pre-Celtic level at Alcácer do Sal. (DS)

(d) There is no record e.g. of Carthaginian exploitation of the copper of the Alentejo, which Romans later mined at Aljustrel. As all of southern Portugal is poor in tin, silver, and gold, there was little there to distract them from their preoccupation with such places as Andalusia and Murcia. (DS)

HOMOGENEITY OF THE IBERIAN MEDITERRANEAN REGION

At the time of their first contacts with the west, the earliest Phoenicians and Greeks encountered a culture area with fundamentally similar characteristics throughout. It extended along the Mediterranean coasts, slopes, and adjacent interior valleys, from the Pyrenees to the Guadiana River… With their usual perspicacity, the Greeks recognized this area as being essentially homogeneous and sharply different in culture from the Celtic territories of the interior and of the north and west peripheries…

Indisputably, one of the important Iberian groups was that of the Tartessians, wealthy farmers and traders in metals. It was their knowledge of the sources of metals that first brought them in touch with the Phoenicians and Greeks. They knew the coasts to the west and northwest of their home, for the tin and gold that they traded came from Galicia. They were also able to furnish silver, copper, and lead, which came to them from the Guadalquivir River basin. It appears that tin was the product of greatest importance at the time. The early centuries of the pre-Christian millennium were times of great opulence along the coast of Galicia. That this wealth was due to tin may be inferred from the fact that the Greeks used the termCassiteridesto identify the area. However, the question as to the ultimate source of tin is moot. In spite of the lack of archaeological evidence it seems likely that, in the earliest years of trading, it came from alluvial deposits along the river banks of Galicia. There is a possibility, however, that Bronze Age connections with French Brittany and with the British Isles had continued and that the Galicians were merely purveyors of tin from those places. This basic necessity of bronze-users was scarce in the other parts of the Phoenician and Greek world. There was no tin in all of North Africa, Asia Minor, Caucasia, Cyprus, mainland Greece, and the Greek islands. The mines of Tuscany were small. It is no wonder that both Galicia and the Tartessians were prosperous and that the Phoenicians and Greeks were attracted to the area.

“Tin was the product of greatest importance at the time. This basic necessity of bronze-users was scarce in the other parts of the Phoenician and Greek world.” (Dan Stanislawski)

GREEK EXPLORATION AND SETTLEMENT

Hellenic ship, mocaic, ca 1st century BCE-CE

The earliest Greek ventures may perhaps be dated as of the 9th or the 8th century BC. Possibly Rhodian and Chalcidian sailors were in the western Mediterranean at this time… The line of Ionian names stretching along the islands and coasts of the western Mediterranean and to the Atlantic coast of Portugal – the names with the -oussa termination – can probably be ascribed to this early period. These names are important in dating the arrival of the Greeks in western waters. They mark the island route of the early Greek navigators. Starting from Syrakoussai [Syracuse] in eastern Sicily, they may be followed through Ichnoussa (Sardinia), Meloussa (Menorca), Rornyoussa (Mallorca) and Pityoussa (Ibiza). The latter three, even now, are identified on maps as the Balearics or Pityusas.(e) The -oussa names extend westward to the straits of Gibraltar and up the Atlantic coast of Portugal to Ophioussa, in the region of Lisbon, and the general area of Portugal plus Galicia may have been vaguely termed Ophioussa.

The “Balearides” (Gymnesian) and the “Pityusae” Isles on an old map

(e) The Balearics comprise two island groups: the Gymnesians (Majorca and Minorca), and the Pityuses (Eivissa or Ibiza and Formentera). The term “Balearic” derives from the Greek Βαλλιαρεῖς or Βαλεαρεῖς (Baleares in Latin, from βάλλω, meaning “to launch”), referring to the islanders who were skilled slingers and served as mercenaries for the Hellenes, Punics, and Romans. However, Strabo regarded the word as of Phoenician origin, as the equivalent for lightly armoured soldiers the Greeks called γυμνῆτας, hence Γυμνησίαι (from γυμνός, meaning naked). This does not mean they fought naked, but that they used much lighter armament than the hoplites. Nevertheless, according to Lycophron‘s Alexandra, the toponym refers to some shipwrecked Boeotians who were cast nude on the islands (a story evidently invented to account for the name); or to the islanders themselves who were often nude (probably because of the year-round benevolent climate). In the Gymnesian Islands there are megalithic stone monuments (naveta, taula and talaiot) which speak of a very early prehistoric human activity. They are similar, but not necessarily related, to the nuraghe of Sardinia, and the torri of Corsica. One of the earliest cultures on Minorca was influenced by other Mediterranean civilizations, including the Minoan. Those islanders e.g. may have imitated the inverted plastered timber columns found at Knossos (such evidence is probably not “convincing” enough for Stanislawski).There is also a tradition that the Balearics were colonized by Rhodes after the Trojan War. The Pityusic Islands (from the Greek πιτύα, pine tree) are sometimes informally called in English as the Pine Islands, which is identical to the ancient Hellenic name Πιτυοῦσσαι, “pine-covered islands”. In antiquity they were listed in Claudius Ptolemy‘s Geography under the names Ophiusis and Ebyssus, which had a town of the same name. It is the port Ibossim founded by the Phoenicians in 654 BCE, later known to Romans as Ebusus, hence Eivissa (in Catalan) or Ibiza (in Spanish). (ML)

Herodotus said that it was Greeks from the city of Phocaea in Asia Minor who were first to navigate in the western Mediterranean waters. It may seem temerous to question the facts of the father of history, but Antonio García does so convincingly.(f) The Phocaeans, says he, arrived late upon the scene, profiting by earlier maritime contacts. Nor does he accept the statement that the important voyage of Colaeus, the Samian, was a voyage of discovery of Tartessos for the Greeks. This widely heralded 7th century journey was, to him, merely one – although perhaps the most profitable and spectacular up to that time – of many such voyages that had been made by Rhodians, Chalcidians, Samians, and others.(g)

(g) Another point of view is expressed by H. R. W. Smith in his review of García’s Hispania Graeca. Smith does not deny the thesis of García but says that he can find no reason to believe that the Phocaeans reached Tartessos prior to the time of Arganthonios, the Tartessian king friendly to the Greeks, or before the voyage of Colaeus. (DS)

Following the Mediterranean island route, the Phocaeans arrived from Asia Minor to Iberia.

Whatever the dating may be – and the archaeological inquiry has far to go – the Phocaeans certainly became the most active and effective Greeks in the area. Their colonization had energy and breadth and was the only one in the western Mediterranean with lasting results… There is no specific evidence that this activity was connected with the decay of Tyre, but there is such a coincidence in time. Tyrian decline had begun by the end of the 8th century BC and was notable during the following century. This was the time of the voyage of Colaeus the Samian (650 BC), the founding of the Phocaean colony of Massalia, present Marseille (600 BC, or approximately then), and the founding of Alalia in Corsica (640 BC, or approximately 40 years prior to Massalia). Some time before the end of the century, Mainake, the most westerly of Phocaean colonies, was founded near Málaga.(h)

(h) Within 20 miles to the east, says García; Smith suggests that it might even be at approximately the outskirts of present Málaga. (DS)

Some dates are different here. The difference in Colaeus’ voyage is not important (650, not ca 640 BCE); but the dating of the founding of Alalia is almost one century earlier (650 instead of 566 BCE). Perhaps, as in other similar cases, the older date denotes the creation of a temporary settlement before the founding of a city. (ML)

This century was one of intimacy between Phocaeans and Tartessians. The reign of Arganthonios of Tartessos began in the 7th century BC. The ancient sources spoke of his 80-year reign but probably, in typical Greek fashion, they dramatized a dynasty or a period by creating a mythical longevity for a single ruler. Whether this represented one ruler or several does not alter the fact that there was frequent and close contact between Tartessos and Phocaea. This was the period of the Phocaean maritime dominance during which the Tartessian king lent money to the Phocaeans to build their fortifications against the threat of the Persians.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GREEKS AND PUNIC PEOPLES
IN THEIR RELATIONS WITH IBERIA

The island and bay of Gadir: the Phoenicians’ springboard for attacks against Tartessos

The period of the decline of Tyre was not only important for the Ionian Greeks, but also for the Tyrian colony of Carthage. During the time of Phocaean colonization, Carthage too was expanding. As early as 653 BC it had established the colony on Ibiza of the Balearics, which lay athwart the Greek island route to the west. After 573 BC, when Tyre fell to the Babylonians, Carthage showed increasing independence. Competition for western metals was growing between the two great rivals, Carthage and Greece. It is reasonable to assume that the friendship of Arganthonios (or that of his dynasty), throughalmost a century of time, was more than mere affection and amiability. It probably represented a form of alliance in which the Tartessians aided the Phocaeans in their struggle against the threat to their mother city. In return, Greeks supported the Westerners against the growing aggressiveness of Carthage and the Punic colony of Gadir, which threatened the area of Tartessos. Almost from the time of their founding of Gadir the Phoenicians showed their expansionist tendencies. It was not long before they were using the island as a base of attack against the mainland and the Tartessians.

“The [Greco-Tartessian] friendship represented a form of alliance… against the growing aggressiveness of Carthage and Gadir, which threatened the area of Tartessos. Almost from the time of their founding of Gadir the Phoenicians showed their expansionist tendencies. It was not long before they were using the island as a base of attack against the Tartessians.”
(Dan Stanislawski)

Greek Massaliotes in Iberia

The Greeks were usually neither pacific nor friendly neighbors when the prospect of gain was apparent. In this they differed little from the Phoenicians. However, in their relations with the Tartessians they had no desire, it would seem, for control of land or people, but merely wanted to trade their products, especially olive oil and wine, for Tartessian metals.(i) In fact, the history of Greek contacts with Iberians is one of amity, and the hospitality of the Iberians toward Greeks was proverbial. The purposes of both peoples were served by friendly intercourse and mutual support against the common enemy, especially after the increased importance and the expanded ambition of Carthage. A major clash for complete dominance of the area was inevitable. This was speeded by events in the eastern Mediterranean area…

“The history of Greek contacts with Iberians is one of amity, and the hospitality of the Iberians toward Greeks was proverbial. The purposes of both peoples were served by friendly intercourse and mutual support against the common enemy, especially after the increased importance and the expanded ambition of Carthage. A major clash for complete dominance of the area was inevitable.” (Dan Stanislawski)

(i) Pierson Dixon, The Iberians of Spain, and Rhys Carpenter, The Greeks in Spain, state that the olive tree and the vine were introduced into Spain by the Greeks. Olive oil was exported from Greek Akragas to Carthage in the first half of the 1st millennium BC. No doubt the Greeks traded in wine with Iberia. Wine made from grapes is very old in the countries of the eastern Mediterranean, and the Phoenicians were famous merchants of wine… (DS)

Why then Carthage bought wine from the Hellenes and not from the Phoenicians, their kindred? Probably because Akragas was very close; for the Punic traders profit was more important than kinship. Or because, as usual, the Phoenician wine could not stand a comparison with the Greek wine… (ML)

THE ALALIA COLONY AND ITS EFFECTS

Phocaean electrum coin with playing seals

In this part of his narrative, Dan Stanislawski turns his attention to the historic developments in Asia Minor: in 546 BCE Cyrus captured Lydia, causing “a mass migration of perhaps half of the population of Phocaea to their Corsican colony of Alalia”. When the Persians took Phocaea, “all the men in this city of probably 5,000 to 7,000 people had gone. This population figure suggests the large number of available vessels, and points to the commercial importance of the city at that time”. There follows the Battle of Alalia“sometime between 540 and 535 BC” with its disastrous results for the Hellenes and also the Tartessians.

Carthage may then have sealed the straits of Gibraltar, as Carpenter suggests. More likely, the straits had been largely sealed for a long time, but after the battle the land route between Mainake and Tartessos was also blocked. Mainake itself was destroyed by the Carthaginians toward the end of the century, to end its traffic and its competition with the Carthaginian settlement in the location of present Málaga…

As Carthage had inherited the western empire of Tyre, so did Massalia fall heir to that of her mother city, Phocaea. Greek trade became centered here, with the end of Phocaean maritime enterprise in the West of the Mediterranean. Trade through France to Brittany and beyond had been undoubtedly important to the Massaliotes previous to this time, but the record had been obscured by the greater drama of the struggle on the Mediterranean. During the last half of the 6th century BC, during which time Carthaginians grasped complete power in the West, the prosperity of Galicia – presumably based upon tin – declined. This decline may have been due to the change from the sea route, by way of the Straits, to that from Massalia, via the French rivers, to the northwest and ultimately to Britain…

“Galicia’s decline may have been due to the change from the sea route, by way of the Straits, to that from Massalia, via the French rivers, to Britain. The direct land route from Massalia skirted the Carthaginian barrier and eliminated Galician middlemen.” (Dan Stanislawski)

Stanislawski offers four possible explanations for the Galician decline; the second one is probably the most important:

More likely, the Galicians had for some time been not producers, but purveyors, of tin from French Armorica or the British Isles. If this were true, the direct land route from Massalia would have skirted the Carthaginian barrier and eliminated Galician middlemen… At approximately the same period of time there was an increased interest in silver… by the avidity with which the Greeks of Asia Minor sought it for coinage… Perhaps the richest of ancient silver mines was that of Mastia (or Massia), a region second only to Tartessos in commercial importance. The ancient prosperity of the region and of its most important city, also named Mastia (or Massia), the later Cartago Nova, and probably the site of the present Cartagena, was based upon silver mining through several centuries. Great amounts were mined under the direction of Hannibal in the 3rd century BC, and it was still a large operation at the time of Polybius in the succeeding century.

CARTHAGINIAN DOMINATION OF THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN

The Celts (the only Indo-Europeans in Iberia) lived mainly in Galicia, the Celtiberians in Portugal and half of Spain, the Iberians in the other half (Andalusia to Catalonia),
the Basques in NE Spain and SW France

[After the battle of Alalia] Greek commercial activity in Iberia was ended and Carthage was less inhibited in the spread of its control. Tartessos, which had feared the Carthaginians and had allied itself with the Greeks, was left without support and was destroyed.(j) In the following century, probably 20,000 Iberian mercenaries were fighting in Sicily for the Carthaginians… Celts were also serving as mercenaries in the Carthaginian forces.

(j) If there was no one city of that name, it is not important to the larger fact that the area as a whole was put under the control of the Carthaginians of Gadir (Carpenter, The Greeks in Spain). (DS)

There was an increasing reliance upon mercenaries from the peninsula, not only from the fringes but from deep within the interior as well. In the late 3rd century BC, Hannibal’s army included Celtiberians from the northern interior, Galicians from the extreme northwest, Lusitanians from Middle Portugal, Vettones from the middle Tagus drainage – and these do not complete the list. Such troops, however, were something other than pure mercenaries; many had been forcibly impressed into service… During earlier centuries no general antagonism in Iberia seems to have been engendered by the Carthaginians. Locally there may have been antagonism, such as probably existed between the Carthaginians and the Tartessians, but for the tribes of the interior the Carthaginians may have had a friendly appeal. They offered an opportunity to fight with pay. It was later, when the Carthaginians had expanded their power and increased their need for troops that their tactics changed with regard to these tribes of the interior, which had long served as a source of manpower. When Hannibal, in desperate need for troops and under economic pressure, forcibly impressed some of them into his armies, the others reacted in bitter opposition. The tribes of the interior were a bellicose lot. An opportunity to fight for pay was not distasteful to them but a demand that they submit to enslavement was another matter. According to Strabo they resisted Hannibal as they later did the Romans for somewhat the same reasons.

Nevertheless, tens of thousands of mercenaries were introduced to new lands and cultures of the middle and eastern Mediterranean. Since this process had been going on from as early as the 6th century BC and many men had returned to the peninsula, the effect upon attitudes of the peoples of the Meseta[‘Plateau’, in the heart of Iberia] and even some of the remote western coasts may have been considerable.

The harbour of Carthage

Dan Stanislawski’s impartial view of Iberia is almost identical with the historical panorama of the last three Chronicles: Ὅπερἔδειδεῖξαι, as Euclid would say, or quod erat demonstrandum (Q.E.D), or ‘what had to be demonstrated’! There is still one Periplus left, dropping anchor at several emporiain the Mediterranean, to come full circle back to our starting point – a voyage full of surprises with several itinerant artisans, artists, and masters we meet on the way, “members of the Architects’ and Painters’ Guilds”, whose Linear A writing, however, puzzles the famous archaeologist Leonard Woolley…